"Yes, I'm sure he liked it," answered Bee. "I wish it had been Mr. Jordan himself, though. Don't you think Mr. Harris is rather young to have much authority, father?"
"Tut, tut," replied the composer tetchily, "what nonsense! He's shrewd, he's a smart fellow. What do you suppose he came for—to smoke a cigar with me? Business men don't run after strangers for nothing. You talk without considering. There's always a motive for these friendly actions, my dear. Women don't look beneath the surface; I could never teach your poor mother, God bless her! to look beneath the surface. I daresay he'll drop in next Sunday again; it wouldn't surprise me at all."
He turned to Hilda, as he generally did when he wasn't in trouble. And Hilda nodded—and smiled.
[CHAPTER XXI]
The following morning there came to "Miss H. Sorrenford" a letter from David Lee—an urgent letter because he had been so long impatient, demanding an explanation of her silence. The explanation was that each time she had re-read the note of thanks he had written before leaving town her imposture had looked to her more shameful; but after considering a great deal how to say as much in her answer, she did not say it at all. She told him instead something of her feelings in returning to the house that was called her home.
It was very sweet, very strange, to David to receive the first of her confessions breathing a familiar presence. Hilda had never seemed so close to him as she did in the hour when he pored over these pages of her sister's. He heard Hilda's voice while he welcomed Bee's thoughts; when he replied to Bee, he saw Hilda's face. And it was the face, not the thoughts, that maddened him with longing. It was the face that was dizzying him as he paltered with his conscience and offered prayers to the future. Though he did not discriminate, though he associated the soul of the woman with the form of the girl, the triumph was to the physical. The form, not the soul, tempted him to renounce his father's gospel, even while he proclaimed the soul his justification. The charm of the woman's letters lay no longer in what she said, but in his belief that the girl said it.
Hilda's fairness, not Bee's mind, held his love; and in his confidences to Bee there was a cadence that there had not been, a difference which she strove to persuade herself was imaginary, because to admit that it existed would be to realise that the photograph had wrought mischief. There was nothing tangible, no word to point to, but beneath the intimate record of his doings, and the references to his work, underlying the intuition which enabled him to respond, as always, to more than she had spelt, she felt something in her friend's letters that was new, something—she was conscious of it only in moments—something that made them now a man's letters to a woman.
When September was nearing its end, David received a few lines from Ownie. She wrote:
"I have been meaning to congratulate you oh the success of the book of poems that people are talking about. So you have made a hit? Well, I am very glad. I was always sure when you were a child you would do well at writing—you have all my poor father's talent. Well, I am very glad. Though I haven't had a chance to read it, and never seen anything of you, I am delighted to hear you have done so well. I hope you are well, and don't forget I like to see you whenever you have time to spare." She remained, on paper, his "Affectionate Mother."