"There's not a thing to wait for now," Dick had said, with beaming eyes; and poor Rose's ideas of "youth," and "time to get ready," and all that sort of remark, were put aside without the least consideration. "We will have a little house of our own," Dick continued, "we will not go to boarding, as some people do; you are too good a housekeeper for that, I am sure; and as New York has no houses for young people of moderate means, we will have a home of our own near the city. Shall we not, Rose?"
Dick was a very busy young man for a couple of months after this. One thing Dr. Heremore did that seemed hard, but not so very unnatural, and of which no one who has never felt a wrong to some one dearly loved should judge. He begged that he might never see Mr. Brandon, nor be asked to hold any communication with him. He gave Mary a certain sum of money, which he wished her to use for her father and step-brothers; but beyond that, he left Mr. Brandon to help himself.
After attending to all his grandfather's requests and suggestions, Dick, as he had been invited to do, returned to Wiltshire to give an account of his management, and to take up some things for Mary's use. He was on his way to the boat when he suddenly started and exclaimed, "Mr. Irving!" for no less a person than his "Sir Launcelot" was standing beside him. Mr. Irving, not recognizing him, bowed slightly and passed on, and Dick began to be relieved that Mary was so far away; perhaps, after all, it was a great deal better.
But another surprise was in store for Dick, who—an inexperienced traveller even yet, and always in advance of time—had gone on and waited long before the boat prepared to leave; for at the last moment a carriage drove rapidly to the pier, and a gentleman sprang from it in time to catch the boat. It was "Sir Launcelot."
"Mr. Heremore, I believe," he said to Dick, when they met somewhat later on the boat. "I called on Mr. Brandon to-day, just after you met me, to pay my respects to him on my return from Europe. I found him in a different business from that in which I had left him, and very reserved. I asked after the ladies of his family, who, he told me, were at your grandfather's and his father-in-law's, in Maine, adding that there was a long story, which I had better come to you to hear, if you had not already left. I have business in Maine, so followed you up."
So they made acquaintance; and the new-found relationship with Mary was explained, as also the reverses Mr. Brandon had met with.
"His wife dead, too, you tell me! How shocked he must have been at my questions of her! How like him not to give me a hint!" exclaimed Mr. Irving.
The new friendship progressed well, as it often will between two gentlemen, one of whom is in love with the other's sister, although there was a wide difference between their characters. Mr. Irving was many years older than Dick, as his finished manners and his manly presence attested, without the aid of a few gray hairs on his temples, not visible, and half a dozen or so in his heavy moustache, very visible and adding much to his good looks, in the eyes of most of the ladies who saw him. It seemed as natural to Dick that this travelled man, so polished, so princely as he was, should be just the one to please his high-bred sister, and he captivated by her, as that he himself should belong to Rose and she to him. Consequently he did not put on any of the airs in which brothers, especially when they are very young, delight to appear before their sister's admirers.
Dick had even tact enough, when they reached Dr. Heremore's house —for, of course, Mr. Irving's "business in Maine" did not interfere with his accompanying Dick to Wiltshire—to be, very busy with the carriage and trunks, while Mr. Irving opened the little gate, and announced himself to the young lady on the porch. When Dick, a few minutes after, greeted his sister, he had no need, though Mary's color did not come as readily as Rose's, to say with Sir Lavaine: