Philly's father bent his head; he knew, he thought, only too well; no divine revelation in a disordered digestion!
"Don't you think," William King said, smiling, "you might try to make her feel that she is wrong not to accept him, now that the charm has worked, so to speak?"
"The charm?" the old man repeated, vaguely.
"I thought you understood," the doctor said, frowning; then, after a minute's hesitation, he told him the facts.
Henry Roberts stared at him, shocked and silent; his girl, his Philippa, to have done such a thing! "So great a sin—my little Philly!" he said, faintly. He was pale with distress.
"My dear sir," Dr. King protested, impatiently, "don't talk about SIN in connection with that child. I wish I'd held my tongue!"
Henry Roberts was silent. Philippa's share in John Fenn's mysterious illness removed it still further from that revelation, waited for during all these years with such passionate patience. He paid no attention to William King's reassurances; and his silence was so silencing that by and by the doctor stopped talking and looked down into the garden again. He observed that those two heads had not drawn any nearer together. It was not John Fenn's fault....
"There can be no good reason," he was saying to Philippa. "If it is a bad reason, I will overcome it! Tell me why?"
She put her hand up to her lips and trembled.
"Come," he said; "it is my due, Philippa. I WILL know!"