“My dear, I can well sympathize,” said Mrs. Johnson, “it is enough to upset any one. Go up to bed. You will get to sleep and forget it.”
For one thing Isoline was devoutly thankful, and that was that Emily had apparently not guessed her secret. Soon after her arrival, she had told her the story of her mysterious admirer, and Emily, though professing herself rather shocked, had been immensely interested; it was part of her creed that Isoline could do no wrong. She was romantic too, and she had more imagination than her friend, and the idea of it appealed to her. Should she happen upon the truth, the other girl felt as if she could never face her again, and she was now really glad to be going back to her uncle immediately, away from the strain of living in perpetual fear of discovery. She had described Rhys so often that Emily’s want of perception appeared wonderful. But light might break in on her any day, and, if it did, her own prayer was that she might be absent. The two parted a couple of days later with secret relief on her side, and on Emily’s genuine tears.
She left the coach as she had done before, at the foot of Crishowell Lane, and, this time, found Mr. Lewis waiting to meet her and drive her to the Vicarage. As she entered the door, Howlie put a letter into her hand, which had come, he said, just after her uncle’s departure, and she took it up-stairs to read.
It was from Harry Fenton, and announced the news that a cousin, long lost sight of, and supposed by the family to be dead, had at last justified their belief by expiring in a distant colony, and, in so doing, had left him a sum representing two thousand a year.
[CHAPTER XXXIII
A BIRD IN THE HAND]
HARRY’S employment was not so congenial as to keep him one day at work after the news of his legacy had reached him, and, as soon as it was possible, he started for home.
He was now his own master, and Isoline, that star for which he had sighed through so many weary months, was within his reach; it was a glorious thought. He could hardly resist throwing his hat into the air as he drove along the road between Hereford and Waterchurch again, and saw all the familiar objects he had passed with her when they had travelled along it together in the early days of their acquaintance.
There would be no need for shilly-shallying now, no waiting on luck, on circumstances, on the tardy decisions of other people, for the trumps were in his hand and he had only to declare them and lead the game as he liked. Two thousand a year was a fortune to make him perfectly independent of anything his father might say or do, for were he to cut him out of the place itself, his future would still be assured, and he did not suppose that the Squire would take such a desperate line as that. Where would be the sense of leaving the poverty-stricken estate away from the only one of his sons who had the money to change its fortunes?
His departure for London had not upset Mr. Fenton very greatly, but the news that he had found work and was actually doing it came as a surprise. He had sat him down complacently in the belief that his prodigal son would soon return, wiser and sadder, to throw himself into the arms of a forgiving parent—for he meant to be forgiving. He was very fond of his children, and, though he stormed about the folly and ingratitude of this one’s behaviour, he looked forward to the day when he should receive him back, and, having magnanimously dismissed the subject of his infatuation in a few sentences, should welcome him again to reason and acquiescence in the saner judgment of older and more sober heads. It never struck him that there could be any other ending to the episode.