A slight frown contracted the capacious brow of Isaac Thornycroft. "Do you not see the precautions I have taken will prevent that? On the first breath of need my brother Cyril will come forward to testify to the marriage, and you hold the certificate of it. Believe me, I weighed all, and laid my plans accordingly. I chose to make Anna my wife. It is not expedient to proclaim it just yet to the world--to your friends or to mine; but I have done the best I could do under the circumstances. Cyril will be true to us and keep the secret; I know you will also."
Mrs. Sam Copp faintly protested that she should never get over the blow. Isaac, with his sunny smile, his persuasive voice, told her she would do so before the day was out, and saw her seal the certificate in a large envelope and lock it up.
Then he started with his bride to a small unfrequented fishing village in quite the opposite direction to Coastdown. And Anna had been married some days before she knew that her marriage was a secret from her husband's family, Cyril excepted, and to be kept one.
[CHAPTER IV.]
In Love.
Robert Hunter sat in his chambers--as it is the fashion to call offices now. They were in a good position in Westminster, and he was well established; he had set up for himself, and was doing fairly--not yet making gold by shovelfuls, as engineers are reputed to have done of late years, but at least earning his bread and cheese, with every prospect that the gold was coming.
Plans were scattered on the desk at which he sat; some intricate calculations lay immediately before him. He regarded neither. His eyes were looking straight out at the opposite wall, a big chart of some district being there, but he saw it not; nothing but vacancy. Very unusual indeed was it for Robert Hunter the practical to allow his thoughts to stray away in the midst of his work, as they had done now.
During the past few months a change had come over his heart. It was of a different nature from that which, some two or three years before, after the death of his wife, had changed himself--changed, as it seemed, his whole nature, and made a man of him. Even now he could not bear to look back upon the idle, simple folly in which his days had been passed; the circumstances that had brought this folly home to his mind, opened his eyes to it, as it were, had no doubt caused him to acquire a very exaggerated view of it; but this did no harm to others, and worked good for himself.
With the death of his wife, Robert Hunter had, so to say, put aside the pleasant phase, the ideal view of life, and entered on the hard, the stern, the practical--as he thought for ever. He had not calculated well in this. He forgot that he was still a young and attractive man (though his being attractive or the contrary was not at all to the purpose); he forgot that neither the feelings nor the heart can grow old at will. It might have been very different had his heart received its death-blow; but it was nothing but his conscience; for he had not loved his wife. But of that he was unconscious until lately.
Love--real love--the sweet heart's dream that can never but once visit either man or woman, had come stealing over Robert Hunter. Never but once. What says a modern poet?