"I am so glad you are come," she said. "Aylmer will have told you everything. As for me, I feel as though I were the cause, though an innocent one, of this great trouble."
Tears streamed down her face. It had been difficult for her to say so much, and she could not utter another word.
Captain Torrance pressed her hand between both his own, as he answered, "To hear you blame yourself adds to my sorrow, for you have been so good to him."
Turning to Aylmer, Captain Torrance began to speak of personal kindnesses received from him, but Mr. Matheson succeeded in interrupting these acknowledgments.
Kathleen had long suspected that John Torrance was deeply indebted to her guardian, and this, together with the silence of the latter and his goodness to Ralph, had increased her admiration for his character. A less noble nature would have done nothing, or tried to make capital out of his services.
Perhaps, had poverty driven away the captain, and Ralph with him, Kathleen's future might have been different, and Aylmer have won the prize dear to him above all others. Now with both under his ward's roof, he lost hope; but still the noble unselfishness remained, and he prayed for Kathleen's true happiness in preference to his own. "If she should give her heart to John Torrance, may God make him worthy of her!" was the honest desire of his heart.
Days and nights of anxious watching and alternate hope and fear prevailed, but at length Ralph was pronounced out of danger.
Once on the way to recovery, he was never happy without Miss Mountford. Then he begged for his father's presence, and, though some one was always in the adjoining room, and the door open between the two, the intimacy increased rapidly.
Naturally John Torrance showed his best side, and, to do him justice, he was battling against self, stirred to this by a sense of the goodness of Miss Mountford and Aylmer. Never had he cared so much for her, and yet all there was left in him of his better nature told him that he ought not to strive for the hand of Kathleen.
Ralph had much to say about his friend.