"Something to tell me? Now that is a surprise; I generally do all the talking when I come here."
"Well," Henry Rayne began slowly, and with a look of unusual merriment twinkling in his eyes, "It has taken a long time you see for this surprise to come, but it was worth the trouble of waiting. May be you think that at fifty years all the romance has died out of a man's life, but I am going to show you that such is not the case." (Great Heavens! Guy thought, has the dear old man fallen in love?) "A new life has begun of late for me; henceforth, my love, that has been all yours, must be divided I have assumed a series of new and trying duties—"
"Pardon me, uncle; but you don't mean—you can't possibly be insinuating that you have—have—have done such a desperate thing as to—"
"I have indeed, Guy. I suppose you thought I had no soft corner left in my heart that would be a ready victim to a woman's wiles? but I had, you see." There was a mischevious twinkle in the old man's eye as he spoke. This joke on his clever nephew amused him immensely, while poor Guy was feeling the tight clutch of despair upon his heart Of all the horrors conceivable, Guy had never dreamt of such a thing as his uncle's marriage, and now it was quite evident that his words implied this terrible catastrophe. He saw the long cherished project of his insured welfare passing away so noiselessly from him, dropping through a wedding ring into the clutching fingers of a new-born heir. And when it struck him that the beautiful vision he had feasted his eyes upon last evening was, undoubtedly, the fair destroyer of his every hope, a conflict of violent feelings began to gnaw at his poor heart, making a genuine picture of woeful misery out of the laughing face of a moment before, but he battled against his moral foes, at least—he must not show his uncle that any selfishness of his could mar the sincerity of his felicitations.
"I suppose I am justified in congratulating you?" Guy said in a tone something like that in which one says "'Tis nothing," when three hundred pounds of fashionable humanity apologises for having left its foot print on our toes.
"I know that you do congratulate me warmly," Guy's uncle said, emphatically, "and indeed it is as much for your sake, nearly, as for my own that I rejoice, the benefit will be divided between us." Guy didn't see how—unless his uncle fell into the ordinary routine of wedded life, and grew regretful by degrees—he could share those sentiments very plentifully, but his better nature still revolted against such selfishness, and obeying a generous impulse, he stood up and shook his uncle warmly by the hand.
"I am glad indeed, uncle," he said sincerely, "that at last your earthly happiness is complete. It was poor gratification to you, to trust to me for an ample return for all your unmerited kindness. You deserved some one more faithful and more demonstrative than I. This new tie you have formed will, of course, exclude me from a great portion if not from all of your heart, but, at least, I can still continue to appreciate and love you as though there had been no change. After all, it is the most natural thing in the world for a man to marry."
"Who's married?" Henry Rayne exclaimed in astonishment.
"Why, yourself, to be sure," Guy answered, "I was alluding to you."
Henry Rayne threw back his curly head and laughed heartily and loud; Guy looked on in open-mouthed astonishment, suspecting a temporary aberration of mind in his uncle.