“I know it all, Nathan Blyth. I feel the force of all that you have said. On the other hand, my boy is dying. Like a drowning man I am catching at a straw; and I beseech you, I who never asked a favour of a living man, I beseech you do not deny me my request. If you can trust your daughter, I can trust my son, and as for the gossip of little minds, that will die away as soon as it is born. Nathan Blyth, for the sake of a life more precious than my own, grant me my request.”
Nathan Blyth was in a quandary, he was grievously perplexed, and could not see his way out of the difficulty. Then the thought suddenly struck him that, after all, this was a case in which Lucy herself ought to be consulted.
“If you will excuse me a few moments,” said he, “I will consult my daughter.”
“Let me see her, Nathan Blyth!” said the squire, eagerly, and stretching out his hands in strong entreaty.
Nathan went and told Lucy all that had transpired, and if that honest man had nursed the delusion that his darling had succeeded in, even partially, dislodging Philip Fuller from her heart, the pitiful yearning, the longing look that flashed from her bright hazel eye, the blood-forsaken cheek and lip, as he told of her lover’s danger, drove the fond delusion away for ever.
“The squire asks to see you, Lucy. But you can decline it, if you like, my darling.”
Lucy thought for a moment, and then, with a woman’s quick intuition as to what is best, said, “I’ll see him.”
Casting aside her apron, in which she had been attending to household duties and standing a little—was there ever a woman that did not?—before the kitchen looking-glass to assure herself that she was not a perfect fright, Lucy entered the parlour, and for the first time Squire Fuller saw the fairy who had so bewitched his son that the effect of her glamour was his only hope of life. He rose to his feet, stepped back a pace or two, and bowed as respectfully as he had ever done in royal drawing-room to lady of high degree. Habited in a light morning dress of printed calico, with collar and cuffs of purest white, and a small crimson bow beneath her throat, her piquant beauty and grace were quite sufficient to excuse either Philip Fuller, or anybody else, for plunging head over ears in love so deeply that emerging again was an impossibility.
“Good-morning, Miss Blyth,” said the squire. “Your father has informed you of my errand.”
“Is Master Philip very ill, sir?” and tone and eye and cheek betrayed how much the question meant.