'Had—you a pleasant voyage?' I asked, terribly conscious that this was not the kind of talk which might be expected between him and me at such a moment.
I think he was conscious of this also. He stood a moment without replying, then every line in his face seemed to grow set and firm, and he said gravely: 'How is it that your friends here do not know that I have come to claim my wife, Mary?'
'I put off telling them from time to time,' I replied in a low voice; 'but I fully intended telling them this evening.'
'Let us go in at once,' he said hurriedly.
He drew my hand under his arm, keeping it firmly clasped in his own, and we went silently towards the cottage. Lilian was turning over the contents of a box in search of the brush she wanted, and Mrs Tipper was nodding over her knitting, fatigued with her day's exertion. Neither saw us approach, and both looked up with astonished eyes when we entered the room; and without a moment's pause, Philip introduced me to them as his promised wife.
'We have been engaged for the last ten years,' he said hurriedly, 'and I have just been taking Mary to task for not having told you so.'
'Dear Mary, dear sister, when you ought to have known how much good it would have done us to know!' said Lilian with tender reproach.
'Better late than never, my dear,' cheerfully put in dear old Mrs Tipper, eyeing me rather anxiously, I fancied.
The ground seemed to be slipping from beneath my feet and everything whirling round. I suppose I was looking very white and ill, for Philip gently placed me on the couch, and Lilian knelt by my side, murmuring tender words of love, as she chafed my hands, whilst Mrs Tipper was bending anxiously over me with smelling-salts, &c. But I shook my head, and tried to smile into their anxious faces, as I said: 'I am not given to fainting, you know—only a little tired.'
'The truth is, you have sacrificed yourself for us all this time, and it is now beginning to tell upon you!' said Lilian. Turning towards Philip, she added: 'We have all needed her so much, and she has been so true a friend to us in our time of trouble, that she has forgotten herself, Mr Dallas.'