“Very true, sir; I will accompany you if you will allow me; we can talk in the broad, free, fresh air as well as beneath the carved roof of your library!” said Mark, with some little force in his tone, as though urging a point.
“With all my heart,” said Mr. Wilton.
So together they left Harley dale Hall, and pursued their way to the woods, where Mr. Chewkle lay hidden.
As they sauntered slowly across the park, the old man replied to some questions respecting Flora which Mark put to him in so cheery a strain that the latter augured favourably of his cause. Because he perceived that a reconciliation had ensued between his sister and his father, and as he had the strongest faith in Flora’s adhesion to the choice of her heart, he concluded his father had made the necessary concession, and that his own path to Lotte’s hand was half-freed from the impediments he had conjectured he would place in it.
He at once cast about for an opening to broach the delicate subject; but his father saved him the trouble by plumply introducing it.
Mr. Wilton felt slightly hilarious; brightened hopes of his daughter’s marriage, assisted by the healthful fresh air playing round his brow, disposed him to be sprightly.
How perfectly unconscious he was of the bombardment he was about to receive, or of the animation with which he should return the fire!
He threw the first rocket into Mark’s entrenchment; it was returned with a live shell, which exploded the instant it reached Wilton’s faery fabric, and demolished it with one fatal crash.
“Well, Mark,” exclaimed the old man, as they went on, “pray what is the special, object which has brought you down to Harleydale post-haste from gay London—something important, of course?”
Mark nodded with an air of one who is impatient to communicate some weighty affair.