“I hope Juanita will forget some day.”
“Ah, that is what I try to hope. She is so young, at the very beginning of life, and it does seem hard that all those hopes for which other women live should be over and done with for her. I wish I could believe in the power of Time to cure her. I wish I could believe that she will be able to love somebody else as she loved Godfrey. If she does, I dare say it will be some new person who has had nothing to do with her past life. I had been in and out of love before I met James Dalbrook, but the sight of him seemed like the beginning of a new life. I felt as if it had been preordained that I was to love him, and only him—that nothing else had been real. Yes, Theodore,”—with a sigh,—“you may depend, if ever she should care for anybody, it will be a new person.”
“Very lucky for the new person, and rather hard upon any one who happens to have loved her all his life.”
“Is there any one—like that?”
“I think you know there is, Lady Cheriton.”
“Yes, yes, my dear boy, I know,” she answered kindly, laying her soft hand upon his. “I won’t pretend not to know. I wish, with all my heart, you could make her care for you, Theodore, a year or two hence. You would be a good and true husband to her, a kind father to Godfrey’s child—that fatherless child. Oh, Theodore, is it not sad to think of the child who will never—not for one brief hour—feel the touch of a father’s hand, or know the blessing of a father’s love? Such a dead blank where there should be warmth and life and joy! We must wait, Theo. Who can dispose of the future? I shall be a happy woman if ever you can tell me you have won the reward of a life’s devotion.”
“God bless you for your goodness to me,” he faltered, kissing the soft white hand, so like in form and outline to Juanita’s hand, only plumper and more matronly.
They dined snugly, a cosy trio, in a small room hung with genuine old Cordovan leather, and adorned with Moorish crockery, a room which was called her Ladyship’s parlour, and which had been one of Lord Cheriton’s birthday gifts to his wife, furnished and decorated during her absence at a German spa. When Lady Cheriton left them, the two men turned their chairs towards the fire, lighted their cigars, and settled themselves for an evening’s talk.
The great lawyer was in one of his pleasantest moods. He gave Theodore the benefit of his experience as a stuff-gown, and did all that the advice of a wise senior can do towards putting a tyre on the right track.
“You will have to bide your time,” he said in conclusion; “it is a tedious business. You must just sit in your chambers and read till your chance comes. Always be there, that’s the grand point. Don’t be out when Fortune knocks at your door. She will come in a very insignificant shape on her earlier visits—with a shabby little two-guinea brief in her hand; but don’t you let that shabby little brief be carried to somebody else just because you are out of the way. I suppose you are really fond of the law.”