“Not the least,” he answered; “but I will know; I will find it out; I will free myself and my child from her—I will.”
“No, you shall not,” Phemie interrupted. “Let Georgina be what she may, you shall not do this thing until, at all events, you have had time to think over the matter calmly and justly. You shall hold your peace about her; you shall make no scandal; you have been mad enough in coming here in this fashion to-night, and bringing Fairy with you, and talking before the child as you have done; but that is all the more reason why you should be quiet and prudent now.”
She calmed him down by degrees, and after a time, although she could not get him to go to bed, she did induce him to eat something, and to sit down before the fire, “like a rational being,” as she observed.
When he thought Mr. Stondon must have had ample time to say his say, Mr. Aggland re-entered the room, and urged upon him the desirability of his at once swallowing a certain decoction of herbs, which would, so that gentleman assured him, prevent his having to retire into what Charles Lamb calls “that regal solitude, sickness.”
“I should like to be sick,” retorted the other, pettishly.
“Should you?” said Mr. Aggland; “’twould be a pity, then, to balk so reasonable a fancy;” and he leaned back in his chair and gave over the patient, who remained looking steadfastly at the fire, while from a little distance Phemie contemplated him.
He was a young man no longer; his youth, like her own, had flitted by, leaving no outward traces of its former presence. He was not the Basil Stondon who had come to her beside Strammer Tarn, brushing his way through the heather to the spot she occupied. He was middle-aged, and worn and haggard, not in the least resembling the dream-hero who had crossed the hills too late—too late.
When she thought of that hero, Phemie could see the man no more for the tears that blinded her.
Dreams, friends—dreams! I wonder if we ever shed such bitter tears when the realities of our lives are destroyed and the once sure earth cut from beneath our feet, as we do when, in a mist-wreath, the air-castle vanishes—when the once limitless lands of our fairy kingdom disappear in the depths of the ocean, and are lost to our sight for ever.
Prosperous as her life had proved, Phemie at any rate found it hard to look back upon the dreams and fantasies of her girlish days with equanimity.