Baltazar burst into a fit of heathen laughter. “I thought you were going to end quite differently, Aunt Helen,” he said. “I thought the only person we were to love was going to be God. But it seems that it is man—or woman,” he added bitterly.
Mrs. Renshaw bent low over her work and the shadow grew still deeper upon her face. Seeing that he had really hurt her, Baltazar changed his tone.
“Dear Aunt Helen!” he whispered gently, “how many happy hours, how many, how many!—have we spent together reading in this room!”
She looked up quickly at this, with the old bright look. “Yes, it’s been a happy thing for me, Tassar, having you so near us. Do you remember how, last winter, we got through the whole of Sir Walter Scott? There’s no one nowadays like him—is there? Though Philippa tells me that Mr. Hardy is a great writer.”
“Mr. Hardy!” exclaimed her interlocutor whimsically. “I believe you would have come to him at last—perhaps you will, dear, some day. Let’s hope so! But I’m afraid I shall not be here then.”
“Don’t talk like that, Tassar,” she said without looking up from her work. “It will not be you who will leave me.”
There was a pause between them then, and Baltazar’s eyes wandered out into the hushed misty garden.
“Mr. Hardy does not believe in God,” he remarked.
“Tassar!” she cried reproachfully. “You know what you promised just now. You mustn’t tease me. No one deep down in his heart disbelieves in God. How can we? He makes His power felt among us every day.”
There was another long silence, broken only by the melancholy cawing of the rooks, beginning to gather in their autumnal roosting-places.