“He thinks my father is growing weaker,” said Marjory to Fanshawe, as they continued their walk round that bit of velvet turf which crowned the cliff, “and I think so too.”
“Not more than he has been always—that is since I came,” said Fanshawe.
“Yes, more. And he has grown so gentle too—so gentle. Think of his saying I would be kind to Milly—making a merit of it! It goes to my heart.”
“He was very cross this morning,” said Fanshawe, off his guard.
“Cross! I am sorry I trouble you with such subjects,” Marjory replied at once, with intense dignity. “Of course family details are always unimportant to strangers. Have you heard of a boat that will do for yachting? We do so little boating on the Firth, for ornament; it is all for very use.”
“You would not have me make myself useful to the world in a fishing coble?” said Fanshawe, ruefully, making a hundred apologies with his looks.
And then Marjory would laugh both at herself and him, and there would gather a dangerous blob of moisture in either eye.
Thus it will be seen this moment of waiting was not a solitary moment. It had come to be habitual with them to take that “turn” two or three times round the lawn, after breakfast, and again in the twilight after dinner, when the evenings were mild. It had been Mr. Heriot’s custom always. His “turn” was part of the comfort of his meal. He had given it up, but somehow the others had resumed the habit. Mr. Charles would go once round with Milly before he disappeared to his tower, and then Milly would steal into her favourite corner by the open window, and the other two, sometimes not quite amicably, sometimes indifferently, sometimes with absent talk of all that might be coming, strayed round and round the mossy turf again. Insensibly to herself Marjory had come to look forward to that “turn.”
Fanshawe was a stranger; he offended her sometimes, sometimes he was in the way. She said to herself that she would be glad if he were gone, and wondered why he stayed. Yet there were things which he could understand better than Uncle Charles understood them. Whether he provoked her, or felt for her, somehow there was always an understanding beneath all. He was near her own age; he could enter into her feelings. Marjory did not often go so far as to discuss this question with herself, yet, without knowing it, she would say a great deal to the stranger as they took that turn round the lawn.
It was one morning after breakfast that the end of this long suspense came. They were on the cliff as usual, and as usual Mr. Charles and Milly had gone in. The letters were late that day. How is it that they are always late when they bring important news? Fanshawe by her side recognised Miss Bassett’s writing on an English letter the moment that Marjory took it from the tray. He had seen the writing but once before, and he knew it. So did she. She trembled so that the other letters were scattered all about on the turf, where they lay, no one caring for them. Once more Marjory sat down on the mossy step of the sun-dial. She looked up at him pitifully as she tore open the envelope. He, scarcely less excited, leant over her. He was a stranger, and yet he read the letter over her shoulder, as if he had been her brother, feeling in that moment as her brother might have felt.