The last sentence—“and whom I shall never forget”—had been carefully scribbled out, but Edgar had set himself to work, with the care and earnest application of an engineer and a lover, to decipher the words.
“Dear child!” exclaimed Mr Hazlit, in a fit of abstraction, kissing the note; “this accounts for her never mentioning him;” then, recovering himself, and turning abruptly and sternly to Edgar, he said:— “How did you dare, sir, to write to her after my express prohibition?”
“Well,” replied Edgar, “some allowance ought to be made for a lover’s anxiety to know how matters stood, and I fully intended to follow up my letter to her with one to you; but I confess that I did wrong—”
“No, sir, no,” cried Mr Hazlit, abruptly starting up and grasping Edgar’s hand, which he shook violently, “you did not do wrong. You did quite right, sir. I would have done the same myself in similar circumstances.”
So saying, Mr Hazlit, feeling that he was compromising his dignity, shook Edgar’s hand again, and hastened from the room. He met Aileen descending the staircase. Brushing past her, he went into his bed-room, and shut and locked the door.
Much alarmed by such an unwonted display of haste and feeling, Aileen ran into the library.
“Oh! Mr Berrington, what is the matter with papa?”
“If you will sit down beside me, Aileen,” said Edgar, earnestly, tenderly, and firmly, taking her hand, “I will tell you.”
Aileen blushed, stammered, attempted to draw back, but was constrained to comply. Edgar, on the contrary, was as cool as a cucumber. He had evidently availed himself of his engineering knowledge, and fitted extra weights of at least seven thousand tons to the various safety-valves of his feelings.
“Your father,” he began, looking earnestly into the girl’s down-cast face, “is—”