Neither Lewis nor Bulstrode suspected that anything unusual had happened to Skelton that night. Skelton longed to call Lewis to him and to tell him that he had a friend—that between Sylvia and himself he would have two as stout defenders as could be found; but he refrained for the moment. After dinner, though, when Skelton went out for his after-dinner smoke on the long, leafy, stone porch covered with climbing tea roses that were in all their mid-summer glory, Lewis came too. This was very rare. But to-night he came out and sat looking at the river, and fondling his dog, as if merely for the pleasure of being there. He looked less sad, less shy than usual. The truth was, he was young and full of life, and he could not always be gloomy. Skelton talked to him a little, and the two sat together in the sweet, odorous night, until it was long past Lewis’s bedtime. Presently, though, he began to yawn, and got up to go to bed; and when he said “Good-night,� he went up to Skelton and touched his hand softly.
That touch went to Skelton’s heart, as a baby’s fingers go to the heart of the mother; he felt the deep, unmixed delight he had felt when Sylvia’s radiant, adoring eyes had rested on his; it was one of those delicious moments of which there are too few in every life. Yes, Lewis was certainly beginning to love him.
“Good-night, my boy,� said Skelton, laying his hand fondly on Lewis’s shoulder.
Skelton was so profoundly happy as he walked up and down the long porch, his fine, expressive face so changed and softened, his black eyes luminous in the dark, that he asked himself if, after all, Fate would not demand something more than mere money in payment for so much that was sweet.
CHAPTER XX.
Next morning early, while Sylvia was yet dreaming, a tap came at her door, and a great basket of roses and a letter from Skelton were given to her. The letter told her, most delicately and artfully, what he had intimated the night before. He made a touching appeal for Lewis, and he even told her in detail about the disposition of the property without offending her—for nothing so vitiates sentiment as the talk of money. But there was nothing to vitiate it in the willingness, and even eagerness, that Skelton expressed to give up a fortune for her. Possibly he had not been quite so ready to do it as he professed; but he knew how to make a virtue of a necessity, and it lost nothing in his gallant way of putting it. Sylvia was quite sharp enough to see how ably he had managed awkward facts, and loved him none the less for it, and admired him considerably more. His money and his past were nothing to her. All that any human being can claim of another is the present and the future.
There had been a tremendous commotion at Belfield after Skelton had left the evening before, but Sylvia scarcely remembered a word of it next morning. The only fact her mind dwelt on was that Skelton loved her. One thing, though, Mrs. Shapleigh had promptly resolved before she had closed her eyes the night before, which was, that the trip to the Springs must be given up. Sylvia had landed the leviathan of the matrimonial pool, and Mrs. Shapleigh could not bear to tear herself away from the county in the first flush of her triumph. It is true it was not the custom in those days and in that region to announce engagements, but, nevertheless, Mrs. Shapleigh had no doubt it would get out, and had convincing reasons for so believing. Old Tom was far from objecting to the abandonment of the trip to the Springs. He was not particularly anxious to go himself, and it cost a pretty penny to transport Mrs. Shapleigh and Sylvia and the maid, and the coachman and two horses, nearly four hundred miles from the seaboard to the Alleghany Mountains, and it was destructive to the family coach and usually foundered the horses.
When Sylvia was greeted at breakfast with the announcement that the trip to the Springs was off, naturally it did not grieve her in the least.
Mrs. Shapleigh—good soul!—started upon a round of visits that very morning to give a number of extraordinary and purposeless reasons why the trip was abandoned, and everywhere she went she let the cat out of the bag, to old Tom’s infinite diversion, who went along. Newington was the last place they went to. Blair met them at the door with his usual cordiality, and squeezed Mrs. Shapleigh’s hand and ogled her as if she had been twenty-five instead of fifty—to Mrs. Shapleigh’s obvious delight, although she archly reproved him.
The place, and the master and the mistress of it, looked more prosperous than for many years past; but close observers might see that Blair and his wife were not quite what they had once been; there was a little rift in the lute. Both of them, however, were genuinely glad to see the Shapleighs, who were among the best of friends and neighbours. Mrs. Blair asked after Sylvia, and then the murder was out. Mrs. Shapleigh began: