Isola put her arm through his, while Allegra ran into the house, and husband and wife walked up and down two or three times in the darkness, she telling him all about the wonderful thing that had happened.
“You are glad, are you not, Martin? You are as glad as I am?”
“Are you so very glad?”
“Yes, for I know that Allegra loves him, has loved him for a long time.”
“Meaning six weeks or so—allowing a fortnight for the process of falling in love. Is that what you call a long time, Isola?”
“Weeks are long sometimes,” she answered, slowly, as if her thoughts had wandered into another channel.
“Well, if Allegra is pleased, I suppose I ought to be content,” said Disney. “Hulbert seems a fine, frank fellow, and I have never heard anything to his discredit. He was popular in the navy, and was considered a man of marked ability. I dare say people will call him a good match for Allegra, so long as Lostwithiel remains a bachelor.”
“No one can be too good for Allegra, and only the best of men can be good enough. If I had my own way, I should have liked her to remain always unmarried, and to care for nothing but her nephew and you. I should have liked to think of her as always with you.”
The triangular dinner-party was gayer that evening than it had been for a long time. Isola was in high spirits, and her husband was delighted at the change from that growing apathy which had so frightened him. The ladies had scarcely left the table when Captain Hulbert arrived, and was ushered into the dining-room, where Martin Disney was smoking his after-dinner pipe in the chimney corner—the old chimney corner of that original Angler’s Nest, which had been a humble homestead two hundred years ago.
The two men shook hands, and then John Hulbert seated himself on the opposite side of the hearth, and they began to talk earnestly of the future, Martin Disney speaking with fond affection of the sister who had been to him almost as a daughter.