She let her knitting fall on her lap, and turning round her pleasant face, looked up at him with fond pride shining out of her eyes. She was only ten years his senior, but her affection for him was almost motherly—she had been the only mother he had known, and no child of her own had ever interfered with her love for her early orphaned little brother.
“What are you looking at me for, Bessie?” he asked.
“I was wondering if you are handsome. I mean if any one else would think you so,” she said naïvely.
Mr. Guildford laughed. “I don’t suppose anybody but you ever thought about it,” he said carelessly.
“Your wife will,” said Bessie. And as she said so, she thought to herself that this shadowy personage would be hard to please were she other than proud of her husband. The bare possibility of her not being so, gave Bessie a momentary grudge at her imaginary sister-in-law. Yet Mr. Guildford was not handsome, not even interestingly ugly, which often serves the purpose just as well. He was well made and well proportioned; he was neither very tall nor very short, he had no striking peculiarity of appearance of any kind. But the grave face could look sunny enough sometimes, the keen grey eyes could soften into sympathy and tenderness, the dark brown hair seemed still to have some of the brightness of boyhood about it—he looked like a man for whom the best things of life were yet to come; whose full powers were fresh and unexhausted. There was plenty of strength in the face; strength which the future might possibly harden into inflexibility; strength which already faintly threatened to destroy some of the finer touches of the young man’s character, by concentrating itself into too narrow a channel, too great independence of external sympathy.
“Leave off knitting for a minute or two, Bessie,” said Mr. Guildford. “I want to tell you of rather an unusual proposal I have had made to me to-day. Do you know where I have been, by the bye?”
“Of course not. You never tell me where you are going, and you don’t suppose I ask Sims, do you?” said Mrs. Crichton virtuously. “Where have you been?”
“Do you remember my being sent for a few weeks ago by a family I had never heard of—a family living near Haverstock?” inquired her brother.
“Where the little boy died?” said Bessie, with more interest. “Oh! yes, I remember. Have they sent for you again?”
“Not exactly. But I have been asked if I would undertake to visit there regularly for the next few months. The father—Colonel Methvyn—is an invalid, and this old Dr. Farmer, who has looked after him for years, is going away for some months; he is ill himself, and is anxious to make some comfortable arrangement for Colonel Methvyn. So he thought of me, knowing the summer was not my busy time. I shall have to go to Greystone, once a week, for some months to come. Don’t you think it will be a nice change for me, Bessie? perhaps they will ask me to stay to dinner sometimes.”