Dr. Heriot seemed in no hurry to explain himself; he sat throwing pebbles absently into the watery fissures at their feet, while Mildred watched him with some anxiety. Time had dealt very gently with Dr. Heriot; he looked still young, in the prime of life. A close observer might notice that the closely-cropped hair was sprinkled with gray, but the lines that trouble had drawn were almost effaced by the kindly hand of time. There was still a melancholy shade in the eyes, an occasional dash of bitterness in the kind voice, but the trouble lay far back and hidden; and it could not be denied that Dr. Heriot was visibly happier than he had been three years ago. Yes, it was true, sympathy bad smoothed out many a furrow; kindly fellowship and close intimacy had brightened the life of the lonely man; little discrepancies and angles had vanished under beneficent treatment. The young fresh lives around him, with their passionate interests, their single-eyed pursuits, lent him new interests, and fostered that superabundant benevolence; and Hope and its twin-sister Desire bloomed by the side of his desolate hearth.
Dr. Heriot had ever told himself that passion was dead within him, slain by that deadly disgust and terror of years. 'A man cannot love twice as I loved Margaret,' he had said to his friend more than once; and the two men, drawn together by a loss so similar, and yet so diverse, had owned that in their case, and with their faithful tenacity, no second love could be possible.
'But you are a comparatively young man; you are in the very prime of life, Heriot; you ought to marry,' his friend had said to him once.
'I do not care to marry for friendship and companionship,' he had answered. 'My wife must be everything or nothing to me. I must love with passion or not at all.' And there had risen up before his mind the dreary spectacle of a degraded beauty that he once had worshipped, and which had power to charm him to the very last.
It was three years since Dr. Heriot had uttered his bitter protest against matrimony, and since then there had grown up in his heart a certain sweet fancy, which had emanated first out of pure benevolence, but which, while he cherished and fostered it, had grown very dear to him.
He was thinking of it now, as the pebbles splashed harmlessly in the narrow rivulets, while Mildred watched him, and thought with curious incongruity of the dark, sunless pool lying behind the gray rocks, and of the wild churning and seething of foamy waters which seemed to deaden their voices; would he ever speak, she wondered. She sat with folded hands, and a soft, perplexed smile on her face, as she waited, listening to the dreamy rush of the water.
He roused himself at last in earnest.
'How good you are to me, Miss Lambert. After all, I have no right to tax your forbearance.'
'All friends have a right,' was the low answer.
'All friends, yes. I wonder what any very special friend dare claim from you? I could fancy your goodness without stint or limit then; it would bear comparison with the deep waters of Coop Kernan Hole itself.'