"Oh, David!" she protested, sadly.
"My dear mother, don't be alarmed. I have no intention of calling him out. I am merely interested to know how a sneak-thief looks when he meets—" he laughed; "the man he has robbed. However, it might not be pleasant for the rest of you."
His mother was silent; her plan of making things "commonplace" was not as simple as she thought.
Robert Ferguson, on his door-step, looked after them, his face falling abruptly into stern lines. When he went back to his library he stood perfectly still, his hands in his pockets, staring straight ahead of him. Once or twice his whole face quivered. Suddenly he struck his clenched fist hard on the table: "Well!" he said, aloud, violently, "what difference does it make?" He lit a cigar and sat down, his legs stretched out in front of him, his feet crossed. He sat there for an hour, biting on his extinguished cigar. Then he said in an unsteady voice, "She is a heavenly creature." The vigil in his library, which lasted until the dawn was white above Mercer's smoke, left Robert Ferguson shaken to the point of humility. He no longer combated Mrs. Maitland's wandering words; they did not matter. What mattered was the divine discovery that they did not matter! Or rather, that they opened his eyes to the glory of the human soul. To a man of his narrow and obstinate council of perfection, the realization, not only that it was possible to enter into holiness through the door of sin—that low door that bows the head that should be upright—but that his own possibilities of tenderness were wider than he knew,—such a realization was conversion. It was the recognition that in the matter of forgiveness he and his Father were one. Helena might or might not "have something on her conscience." If she had, then it proved that she in her humility was a better woman than, with nothing on his conscience, he in his arrogance was a man; and when he said that, he began to understand, with shame, that in regard to other people's wrong-doing he had always been, as Sarah Maitland expressed it, "more particular than his Creator." He thought of her words now, and his lean face reddened. "She hit me when she said that. I've always set up my own Ebenezer. What a fool I must have seemed to a woman like Helena. . . . She's a heavenly creature!" he ended, brokenly; "what difference does it make how she became so? But if that's the only reason she keeps on refusing me—"
When Elizabeth and David met in Mr. Ferguson's library at noon the next day, everybody was, of course, elaborately unconscious.
Elizabeth came in last. As she entered, Miss White, nibbling speechlessly, was fussing with the fire-irons of a grate filled with white lilacs. Mrs. Richie, turning her back upon her son, began to talk entirely at random to Robert Ferguson, who was rapidly pulling out books from the bookcase at the farther end of the room. David was the only one who made no pretense. When he heard the front door close and knew that she was in the house, he stood staring at the library door. Elizabeth, entering, walked straight up to him, and put out her hand.
"How are you, David?" she said.
David, taking the small, cold hand in his, said, calmly, "How're you, Elizabeth?" Then their eyes met. Hers held steadfast; it was his which fell.
"Have you seen Nannie?" she said.
And he: "Yes; poor Nannie!"