Walter Hetherington was a fine fresh young fellow of three and twenty, and belonged to the clever set of Scotch painters, headed by Messrs. Pettie, Richardson, and Peter Graham. He was “cannie” painstaking, and rather sceptical, and, putting aside his art, which he really loved, he felt true enthusiasm for only one thing in the world—his cousin Edith, whom he hoped and longed to make his wife.
As a very young girl, Edith had seemed rather attached to him; but of late years, during which they saw each other only at long intervals, she seemed colder and colder to his advances. He noticed her indifference, and set it down somewhat angrily to girlish fanaticism, for he had little or no suspicion whatever that another man’s image might be filling her thoughts. Once or twice, it is true, when she sounded the praises of her Omberley pastor, his zeal, his goodness, his beauty of discourse, he asked himself if he could possibly have a rival there; but knowing something of the relinquent fancies of young vestals, he rejected the idea. To tell the truth, he rather pitied the Rev. Mr. Santley, whom he had never seen, as a hardheaded, dogmatic, elderly creature of the type greatly approved by his mother, and abundant even in Clapham. He had no idea of an Adonis in a clerical frock coat, with a beautiful profile, white hands, and a voice gentle and low—the latter an excellent thing in woman, but a dangerous thing in an unmarried preacher of the Word.
CHAPTER XVII. WALTER HETHERINGTON.
When the party got home from the opera, it was only half-past ten. They sat down to a frugal supper in the dining-room.
“I am sorry you did not wait till the last act,” said the young man, after an awkward silence. “Patti’s death scene is magnificent.”
“I’m thinking we heard enough,” his mother replied. “I never cared much for play-acting, and I see little sense in screeching about in a foreign tongue. I’d rather have half an hour of the Reverend Mr. Mactavish’s discourses than a night of fooling like yon.”
“What do you say, Edith? I’m sure the music was very pretty.”
“Yes, it was beautiful; but not knowing much of Italian, I could not gather what it was all about.”