"Yes, Philip must marry Dorothy," pursued Sidney, in a tone of friendly confidence, "but it will be soon enough in four or five years' time. Then she will be all he can wish for. If I am not mistaken, Dorothy is not indifferent to him. I can see no brighter future for them both than to be man and wife. They are very equally matched in money."
"But if Philip loved someone else?" began the rector gently.
"He does not, he cannot," interrupted Sidney; "surely his mother and I would be the first to know it. He has no intimacy with any girl except Phyllis; and that is the intimacy of brother and sister. They love each other as brother and sister; nothing more."
"Phyllis thinks more of Philip than she does of her brothers," said the rector, with a sigh. If it was painful to him to be suddenly awakened from a dream, there was possibly the same pain in store for his little daughter also.
"Oh, it is nothing but a girl's fancy," answered Sidney lightly, "even if it is so. She has seen no other young men; and we must get her out more, away from this too quiet spot. Laura can easily manage that. She and Philip are quite too young to have set their hearts upon one another; so do not trouble yourself. And George, old friend, though I love your girl for her own sake as well as for yours, I could never receive her as Philip's wife."
"I don't say that Phyllis loves your son," said the rector, "or that he loves her. It is enough for me to know that it would displease you to set me on my guard lest such a misfortune should occur. I will set Laura on her guard too."
"No, no! much better not," replied Sidney, with one of the genial smiles which had never failed to win George's cordial assent to what he said; "we are two old simpletons to be so near quarreling about nothing. I simply confide to you my hopes for Philip as I always talk to you of my plans. They are all children yet; and will make up their minds and change them a dozen times in the next few years. Let us keep our gossip to ourselves. I do not tell Margaret. Why should you tease Laura?"
But the rector went home that night with an anxious and a troubled spirit. The more he considered it the more certain he felt that Philip and Phyllis believed that they were destined for one another. Laura always spoke, vaguely indeed, but with reiterated persistence, of the two together, as if there was no question of them ever being separated. The boys, too, seemed to think of nothing else; and Phyllis was always left to Philip as his special companion, when he came daily to the Rectory. There were small jests and hints, nods and shrugs, all meaning the same things, among the boys, when Philip made his appearance. He had himself never doubted their love for one another. But how this state of affairs had come about he did not know; it had grown up so slowly and surely. It was an inexpressible shock to him to discover that Sidney and Margaret knew nothing of it. Was it not dishonorable toward these, his dearest and oldest friends, to have thus allowed so close an intimacy to exist between his daughter and their son? Had he taken advantage of their noble, generous friendship, which had embraced his children almost as if they were their own? How deeply he was in their debt for all that made life tranquil and free from cares! And he was going to repay them by basely entrapping their eldest son and Sidney's heir into a marriage with his portionless daughter!
The rector was very miserable, and there was no one to whom he could confide his misery. Instinctively he shrank from confessing it to his wife; and of course he could not tell Margaret. It was a high delight to him to speak with Margaret of those spiritual experiences, which she seemed to comprehend almost without words, but which Laura altogether failed to understand. Of this painful and perplexing anxiety he could not speak. Once or twice he tried to approach the subject, hoping that Margaret might utter some word indicating that she, too, was aware of the attachment between Philip and Phyllis. But Margaret gave no sign that she had ever dreamed of such a thing. Though the idea of it seemed natural and familiar at the Rectory, it was quite unthought of at the Hall.
But one plain duty lay before him—to separate his little Phyllis from Philip as much as possible. He faintly hoped that he was mistaken, and that she had not already given her heart to him.