"I want you to like each other—to be real friends," said Mrs. Wornock, earnestly.
"Then don't say another word about it, mother. Friendship under that kind of protecting influence rarely comes to any good; but I am quite prepared to like Mr. Carew on his own account, and I hope he may be able to like me on the same poor grounds."
He had an airy way of dismissing the subject which set them all at their ease, and steered them away from the rocks and shoals of sentiment. Mrs. Wornock, who had been on the verge of weeping, smiled again, and led Geoffrey off to look at the gardens, and all the improvements which had been effected during his three years' absence, leaving the lovers to follow or not as they pleased.
The lovers stayed in the summer-house, feeling that mother and son would like to be alone; and mother and son strolled on side by side, looking like brother and sister.
"My dearest," said Mrs. Wornock, tenderly, slipping her arm through her son's directly they were really alone, and out of sight, in an old flower-garden walled round by dense hedges of clipped ilex, a garden laid out in a geometrical pattern, and with narrow gravel paths intersecting the flower-beds. The glory of all gardens was over. There were only a few lingering dahlias, and prim asters lifting up their gaudy discs to the sun, and beds of marigolds of different shades, from palest yellow to deepest orange.
"My dearest, how glad I am to have you! I begin to live again now you have come home."
"And I am very glad to be at home, mother," answered her son, smiling down upon her, fondly, protectingly, but with that light tone which marked all he said. "But it seems to me you have been very much alive while I have been away, with this young man of yours who is almost an adopted son."
"My heart went out to him, Geoffrey, because of his likeness to you."
"A dangerous precedent. You might meet half a dozen such likenesses in a London season. It would hardly do for your heart to go out to them all. You would be coming home with a large family—by adoption."
"There is no fear of that. I don't go into society, and I don't think, if I did, I should meet any one like Allan Carew."