Mr. Grant rose and took her hand. “I know of his acquaintance with that lady,” he said; “but I think Philip is neither so young nor so old as you would imply. And the truth is, Marion, you have won my heart, and so has he; and my conscience never feels quite at ease until I have made my friends friends of each other. What else does Providence give them to me for?”
“For their own good, I should imagine,” replied Marion, with a smile.
“Aye—the good I may be the means of their doing each other.”
She shook her head and laughed.
“Though to be sure,” she added, “ ’twould be scarce worth while to count the good they are like to do you!”
“I am too far on in years to begin to count the good you have done me, my dear,” said the old gentleman. And then, as they were at the door, he opened it for her, and she passed out. After closing it again, Mr. Grant took out his snuff-box and helped himself to a pinch with an air of much quiet contentment.
CHAPTER XIV.
JUNE in England sometimes combines the tender afternoon of spring with the dawning beauty of summer. There is joyful potency in the sunshine, but no white colorless glare; it seems to proceed almost as much from the face of the earth as from the sun. The air, both in light and in shadow, is of an even warmth—the happy medium between heat and cold—which, like perfect health, exhilarates us with so much subtlety that we are hardly aware of it until it is no more. Nature, who has no memory, triumphs over our weary hearts by telling over once more the sweet story, repeated a myriad times, and with such youthful zest as half to beguile us into the belief that it is new indeed. So, too, the infant man begins the heavy journey whose end we know too well, unshadowed by the gloom of our grim experience, shielded from our dreary sophistries by the baby wisdom brought from Heaven, which we can never learn. We know how soon he must lose that shield of light, yet we prolong for him, if we may, the heavenly period. For our human life is a valley, the gloom of whose depths would be too terrible to endure did we not believe that its limits, on either side, bordered on the sky.
Mr. Grant was, perhaps, peculiarly appreciative of the charm of this English season, because he had been so long exiled to the torrid damps of India. One morning, accordingly, when the family were seated round the breakfast-table, with the fresh air and sunshine streaming through the open window, he pulled out of his fob the large old-fashioned gold watch which he always carried, and having consulted it, said:
“ ’Tis now eight o’clock, Mrs. Lockhart. Shall you be ready in an hour?”