“There are two worlds about us,” said Brooks; “the manifest, that is as plain as a horn-book from A to Ampersand; the other, that is in the mind of man, no iota less real, but we are few that venture into it further than the lintel of the door.” And he had about his eyes an almost fatherly fondness for Gilian, who felt that in the words were some justification for him, the dreamer.
The street was emptying, one by one the people had dispersed. Young Islay’s group broke up, and went their several ways. The Paymaster and Miss Mary and Gilian went in to dinner.
“What’s the matter with you, my dear?” whispered Miss Mary at the turn of the stair when her brother had gone within.
“Matter?” said Gilian, surprised at her discovery. “Nothing that I know of. What makes you think there is anything the matter with me?”
She stopped him at the stair-head, and here in the dusk of it she was again the young companion. “Gilian, Gilian,” said she, with stress in her whisper and a great affection in the face of her. “Do you think I can be deceived? You are ill; or something troubles you. What were you eating?”
He laughed loudly; he could not help it at so prosaic a conclusion.
“What carry-on is that on the stair on a Lord’s day?” cried the Paymaster angrily and roughly from his room as he tugged short-tempered at the buckle of his Sabbath stock.
“Then there’s something bothering you, my dear,” said Miss Mary again, paying no heed to the interruption. And Gilian could not release his arm from her restraint.
“Is there, Auntie?” said he. “Perhaps. And still I could not name it. Come, come, what’s the sense of querying a man upon his moods?”
“A man!” said Miss Mary.