Almost to the moment he came into the room, which was as bright and cheerful as gaslight and firelight could make it. Laying some letters under a weight on the mantel-shelf, he turned round and stood with his back to the fire-place. “How is the child?” he asked. “Has she gone to bed?”
“Yes,” Kate answered, lifting the lid of the teapot and looking in; “I think she will be all right after a night’s rest.”
“You do not look very bright yourself, Kate,” he remarked, as he sat down.
Her cheek flushing, she made the old old woman’s excuse. “I have a little headache,” she said. “It will be better when I have had my tea.”
He took a piece of toast and buttered it deliberately. “Gregg came and saw her?” he asked.
“Yes. He said it was only a sick headache, and would pass off.”
The lawyer made no comment at the moment, but went on eating his toast. But presently he looked up. “What is the matter, Kitty?” he said, not unkindly.
Her face burning, she peered again quite unnecessarily into the teapot. Then she said hurriedly, “I have something I think I ought to tell you, father. Dr. Gregg has asked me to marry him!”
“The deuce he has!” Mr. Bonamy answered in unmistakable surprise. For a moment he did not know what to say, or how to feel about it. If any one had informed the Claversham people that the lawyer’s moroseness was not natural to the man, but the product of many slights, the informant would have lost his pains. Yet in a great measure this was so; and first among the things which of late years had exercised Mr. Bonamy a keen anxiety for his daughters’ happiness had place. He had never made any move toward procuring them the society of their equals; nay, he had done many things in his pride calculated rather to prolong their exclusion. Yet all the time he had bitterly resented it, and had spent many a wakeful night in pondering gloomily over the dull lives to which they were condemned. Now—strange that he had never thought of it before—as far as Kate was concerned, he saw a way of escape opening. Gregg had a fair practice, some private means, a good house, a tolerable position in the town. In a word, he was perfectly eligible. Yet Mr. Bonamy was not altogether pleased. He had no fastidious objection to the doctor. It did not occur to him that the doctor was not a gentleman. But he did know that he did not like him.
So the lawyer, after one exclamation of surprise, was for a moment silent. Then he asked, “Well Kate, and what did you say?”