'You surely remember? The promise I made you, that I would come to look for you when I was free, and if I was not so happy as to find you, would take care of Esther.'
'Well, I am here yet,' said the colonel meditatively. 'I did not expect it, but here I am. You are quit of your promise.'
'I have not desired that, sir.'
'Well, that count is disposed of, and I am glad to see you.' (But Pitt did not feel the truth of the declaration.) 'Now tell me about yourself.'
In response to which followed a long account of Pitt's past, present, and future, so far as his worldly affairs and condition were concerned, and so far as his own plans and purposes dealt with both. The colonel listened, growing more and more interested; thawed out a good deal in his manner; yet maintained on the whole an indifferent apartness which was not in accordance with the old times and the liking he then certainly cherished for his young friend. Pitt could not help the feeling that Colonel Gainsborough wished him away. It began to grow dark, and he must bring this visit to an end.
'May I see Esther?' he asked, after a slight pause in the consideration of this fact, and with a change of tone which a mother's ear would have noted, and which perhaps Colonel Gainsborough's was jealous enough to note. The answer had to be waited for a second or two.
'Not to-night,' he said a little hurriedly. 'Not to-night. You may see her to-morrow.'
Pitt could not understand his manner, and went away with half a frown and half a smile upon his face, after saying that he would call in the morning.
It had happened all this while that Esther was busy up-stairs, and so had not heard the voices, nor even knew that her father had a visitor. She came down soon after his departure to prepare the tea. The lamp was lit, the little fire kindled for the kettle, the table brought up to the colonel's couch, which, as in old time, he liked to have so; and Esther made his toast and served him with his cups of tea, in just the old fashion. But the way her father looked at her was not just in the old fashion. He noticed how tall she had grown,—it was no longer the little Esther of Seaforth times. He noticed the lovely lines of her supple figure, as she knelt before the fire with the toasting-fork, and raised her other hand to shield her face from the blaze. His eye lingered on her rich hair in its abundant coils; on the delicate hands; but though it went often to the face it as often glanced away and did not dwell there. Yet it could not but come back again; and the colonel's own face took a grim set as he looked. Oddly enough, he said never a word of the event of the afternoon.
'You had somebody here, papa, a little while ago, Barker says?'