"Nothing more to be said? Oh!" said Mrs. Sudlow, as she started to her feet, a vivid spot of colour flaming in either cheek. Then staring her husband full in the face, she said, in quiet, venomous accents, "Louth Sudlow, you are a fool!" After which emphatic asseveration she swept slowly from the room with all the dignity of which so little a woman was capable, leaving father and daughter gazing blankly at each other.
A couple of hours after the somewhat stormy scene detailed above, the following note was delivered at Whiteash Cottage:
"Dear Phil,--Papa has told me everything. The only effect has been to make me love you the more, if, indeed, that be possible. This afternoon I am going to Frimpton to see my old nurse, who is ill, and I shall return by the footpath through the meadows between six and seven o'clock. You may come part of the way and meet me if you like.
"Always and always yours,
"F. S."
They met at the stile where the footpath through the fields loses itself in the high road, about a quarter of a mile on the hither side of Frimpton--Phil being determined that the walk back to Iselford should be as long a one as possible. They had only seen each other once since their parting on the landing-stage at Liverpool, and they now stood for a moment or two, hand clasped in hand and eyes gazing into eyes, trying to read whatever secrets of the heart might perchance be revealed therein, and feeling their inmost being flooded with a gladness which, for the little while they stood thus, made speech seem an impertinence.
Fanny was the first to find her tongue. She withdrew her hand from Phil's grasp, and, instead, slipped it under his arm. Then they set their faces towards Iselford.
"Do you know, Phil," began Miss Fan, "it was very noble of you to come to my father and tell him what you did."
"It was simply my duty. No other course was open to me."
"But we don't, some of us, always care to do our duty, even when we see it clearly before us. And, in your case, I am by no means sure that it was a duty, or, indeed, anything more than a piece of modern-day chivalry, beyond the reach of folk of ordinary stature."