“Flora—Flora, my child,” he whispered, yet loud enough for her to hear; though his step had been noiseless and her grief was still in its intensity.
He bent over her, and raised her up, with eyes red and swimming in tears; she turned her feeble gaze upon him, and could not in spite of her anguish, repress an exclamation of surprise at seeing the strange looking benefactor of her father before her.
She attempted to efface the traces of her tears, and to speak, but the task was not so easily to be accomplished.
Nathan perceived her intention, and its result, and in a voice agitated and slightly husky, he said to her—“Don’t mind me, pretty one. Don’t mind me—I know all. Make no struggle with your grief on my account—I say don’t make it for me; and when you have exhausted yourself, and feel very ill, as you will if you go on in this fashion—I think I may say that you will—then take for comfort—you can now, if you like—my assurance that you may rely on me as a friend, and all shall yet go well. I say I think you may rely on me. I know whither your heart has travelled and where it resteth; I have vowed to secure your happiness, Flora—I say, your happiness—and it is not wealth that gives happiness. I think—I know that—I believe—I may say I do know that. You shall be happy yet, pretty one, if you will be so.”
Flora turned gratefully towards him. She knew that he possessed inexplicable power, and seemed to be able to produce results according to his pleasure, and she felt that for him to say that in this affair of the heart he would stand her friend, was almost tantamount—considering the extraordinary influence he possessed over her father—to placing her hand in Hal’s before the altar. .
She bent her sweet eyes upon him gratefully.
“How can I thank you?” she said, in a low tone.
“Thank me!” he cried, with a grin, “you must wait before you do that. I say, you should never be premature with thanks; you should always wait until the promise is redeemed, and you are benefited to your wish, then thank. Promises are slippery things—I say promises sometimes are not fulfilled: thank me, my dear child, when you feel supremely happy through my instrumentality.”
He turned his back to her, pressed his two hands together beneath his chin, and gazed heavenwards.
“You shall be,” he murmured—“by God’s providence, you shall be.”