'What is the object of your visit?' he asked.
The handkerchief was instantly removed from Hiram's face. He cast his eyes reproachfully on the Doctor, and exclaimed, quite in a natural tone:
'Object! are you not my pastor; am I not suffering? Have I not been watching for weeks at my mother's dying bed? And now she has gone, I feel unhappy, very unhappy. I want your advice and sympathy, and spiritual direction.'
The Doctor was staggered—I say staggered, not convinced, not persuaded, not in any sense inclined to change his opinion of the young man before him. But a blow had been well put in, and he felt it.
For Hiram, not imagining the Doctor could have heard of the affair with Miss Tenant, thought his treatment owing to some sort of caprice, and he seized the opportunity to act on the offensive, and dealt so genuine a retort that the former was taken by surprise. For a moment he seemed to be in a revery.
'You have lost your mother,' he said dreamily, while his large features worked with an involuntary movement, betraying strong inward emotion—'your mother; an irreparable loss. Tell me, Meeker,' he continued, after a pause, while he turned his large, searching gray eyes on the young man, 'tell me, did you really love your mother?'
It would have been, one would suppose, the easiest thing in the world for the glib-tongued Hiram to reply to such an interrogatory; but there was something awful in that gaze—not severe, nor stern, nor condemnatory, but awful in its earnest, truthful, not to be escaped penetration.
He hesitated, he stammered, he changed color. Still those eyes regarded him—still Hiram continued to hesitate, and stammer, till some sort of response came out, by piecemeal, incoherently.
Meantime the Doctor had recovered from his revery.
'You have been very unhappy?' he asked, in a dry tone.