"I will do nothing to hasten it, Allan. Your companionship has renewed my pleasure in life. You can never know how I missed you when this house ceased to be your home. It was different when you were at the University—the short terms, the short distance between here and Cambridge, made parting seem less than parting. But when you transferred yourself to a home of your own, and half a dozen counties divided us, I began to feel that I had lost my only son."
"You had but to summon me."
"I know, I know. But I could not be so selfish as to bring you away from your pleasant surroundings, the prettier country, the more genial climate, your hunting, your falconry, your golf, and your new neighbours. A sick man is a privileged egotist; but even now I feel I am wrong in letting you stay here and lose the best part of the hunting season—to say nothing of that other loss, which, no doubt, you feel more keenly, the loss of your sweetheart's society."
"You need not think about it, father, for I mean to stay. Please regard me as a fixture. If you keep as well next week as you are to-day, I may take a run to Wilts, just to see how Suzette and her father are getting on, and to look round my stable; but I shall be away at most one night."
"Go to-morrow, Allan. I know you are dying to see her."
"Then, perhaps, to-morrow. You really are wonderfully well, are you not?"
"So well that I feel myself an impostor when I am treated as an invalid."
"I may go then; but it will only be to hurry back," said Allan.
His heart beat faster at the thought of an hour with Suzette—an hour in which to look into the frank bright face, to see the truthful eyes looking up at him in all confidence and love, to be assured that three weeks' absence had made no difference, that not the faintest cloud had come between them in their first parting. Yes, he longed to see her, with a lover's heart-sickness. Deeply, tenderly as he treasured every hour of his father's society, he felt that he must steal just as much time from his home duty as would give him one hour with Suzette.
He pored over time-tables, and so planned his journey as to leave Fendyke in the afternoon of one day, and to return in time for luncheon the day after. This was only to be effected by leaving Matcham at daybreak; but a young man who was in the habit of leaving home in the half-light of a September dawn to ride ten miles to a six-o'clock meet was not afraid of an early train.