"Is there any change in your feelings towards me, sir?"
"No, none at all. I always liked you very well, and I like you very well still. There isn't a young fellow anywhere who would suit me better, if it weren't for your being such a Papist. I'll tell you what I'll do with you, if you like. You give me an honest promise not to marry my daughter before twelve months are out, and you shall see her every day if you like. And if you can cheer her up and make her get her strength back again, you shall have her and welcome, Papist or no Papist. I'd let her marry the Pope of Rome before I'd see her as sad as she has been during the last two or three months. Stop your dinner, will you? That sandwich is nothing; our dinner-time's one o'clock, and it's just ten minutes to. Alice 'll get up when she knows you're here, I'll warrant."
The reader will easily believe that Philip Stanburne heard this speech with a joy that made him forget his anxiety about Alice. He would bring gladness to her, and with gladness, health. How bright the long future seemed for these two, true lovers always, till the end of their lives! O golden hope, fair promise of happy years!
But the doctor, who had been at Chesnut Hill that morning, had heard a little faint sound in his polished black stethoscope, which was as terrible in its import as the noise of the loudest destroyers, as the crack of close thunder, the roar of cannon, the hiss of the hurricane, the explosion of a mine!
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE SADDEST IN THE BOOK.
Let this part of our story be quickly told, for it is very sad! Let us not dwell upon this sorrow, and analyze it, and anatomize it, and lecture upon it, as if it were merely a study for the intellect, and caused the heart no pain!
It is the middle of winter. The streets of Sootythorn are sloppy with blackened snow, the sky is dreary and gray, and dirtied by the smoke from the factory-chimneys. Sootythorn is dismal, and Manchester is all in a fog. The cotton-spinners' train that goes from Sootythorn to Manchester is running into a cloud that gets ever denser and yellower, and the whistle screams incessantly. The knees of the travellers are covered with "Guardians," and "Couriers," and "Examiners," for there is not light enough to read comfortably. One manufacturer asks his neighbor a question: "Where is John Stedman of Sootythorn? He uses comin' by this train, and I haven't seen him as I cannot tell how long."