‘If he had behaved so to me, Willie, I should have met him half way,’ she afterwards said reprovingly.
‘Yes,’ answered the young man gravely, ‘because you would have known that he loved you for your own sake.’ Then with a gentle sigh he added, ‘Why don’t you meet me half way, Maggie?’
She did not indeed reply as he would have had her, but her tender glance betrayed that if she had not got half way, she was on the road to meet him.
He went away to his work as usual, but by no means in his usual frame of mind. Nor were those he left behind him less moved by his late proceedings than himself.
Before midday the parlour in Norfolk Street was the reception room of quite a throng of dilettanti, some summoned that very morning by Mr. Erin’s special invitation. The new-found deed was handed round among these enthusiasts as a new-born babe, heir to millions, but about whom there are some doubts as to its legitimacy, might be received by a select circle of female gossips, while the proprietor, like a husband confident in his wife’s fidelity, regards their investigations with a complacent smile. They examined it tenderly but with great caution, through spectacles of every description, and in silence befitting so momentous an occasion; yet by their countenances, lit by a certain ‘fearful joy,’ it was easy to see that upon the whole they were satisfied—nay glutted—by the inspection.
The Dilettanti.