"I would not mention it, even to her," said the doctor.
"I do not intend to," replied Astra, decidedly. "But I must go in; mother will miss me."
II.
THE FOUNDATIONS FAIL.
Astra's light form being quickly lost behind the intervening foliage, Doctor Remy turned slowly and meditatively toward his office; which, inasmuch as it had been built for the use and behoof of the late Doctor Lyte, possessed its own door of convenient communication with the garden.
Given opportunity, social equality, and a fine, unremitting tact, and it would seem that any man can marry any woman, whose affections are free. Else, it would be hard to understand how Doctor Remy could have found his way into the heart of Astra Lyte; unless indeed, as is frequently the case, their very dissimilarity should have constituted a principle of attraction; character has its own laws of effective contrast. Astra was enthusiastic, generous, affectionate, with strong religious instincts and aspirations; Doctor Remy was cold, selfish, austere, without reverential sentiment, and, in matters of faith, an utter sceptic. But these traits need not be supposed to have exhibited themselves to Astra in their naked unloveliness. To her imagination, doubtless, they took the fairer form of a calm temperament, and great force and firmness of character, allied to a keen and critical intellect; which last must needs be allowed to take its own appropriate time and road to belief (except as it seemed willing to owe something to her loving guidance). And Astra was of the age and character which are most prone to fall down and worship human intellect; failing, as yet, to understand that it is, in itself, of the earth earthy, and really noble and admirable only as it is enlightened by the spirit of God. She was dazzled and fascinated by the extent and variety of Doctor Remy's attainments, and the range and freedom of his ideas. To talk with him was like drawing the curtain and opening wide the window on a wintry evening, admitting free, frosty air, and giving a far outlook over bleak, white hills and leafless forests. Nor did it alarm her that the air was much too fresh and chill to be breathed long with comfort or safety, and the landscape drearily bare and skeleton-like, since the doctor was always ready, at her slightest sign, to drop window and curtain, and turn back with her to warmer precincts and gentler themes.
And so, it had come to pass that, as Doctor Remy walked up the shady garden walk, he had good reason to congratulate himself upon the success, thus far, of his plans. Not only was Astra won, but she had consented to keep silence about the wooing, for awhile. Thus he was saved from the awkwardness of having to account to Mrs. Lyte for his unwillingness to have the engagement made public. It would be difficult to invent a reason likely to commend itself to her judgment; yet it was out of the question to give her the real one,—namely, his reasonable doubt whether he should be altogether acceptable to Major Bergan as the future husband of that gentleman's heiress, and so, in some sense, as his heir; and his consequent fear lest the will in her favor should be set aside. Such a confession might give a mercenary tinge to his suit, in Mrs. Lyte's eyes, which he wisely deprecated. So far as he knew, neither she nor her daughter had ever heard of the Major's declaration of his gracious intentions toward the latter; or, if they had, they regarded it only as a meaningless ebullition of his rage at Bergan Arling. Such, in truth, would the doctor himself have thought it, except for certain later inquiries respecting Miss Lyte, put to himself by the Major; which seemed to show that the matter had not escaped his memory. Besides, in consideration of the Major's bitter resentment toward his brother and nephew,—extending, apparently, to everybody connected with either,—no more eligible heir to the Bergan estate was to be found, than Astra Lyte. If the Major had made his will, as he threatened, there was no one, in the whole Bergan connection, with so strong a claim upon his favorable consideration.
Here the doctor paused, for a moment, in his slow walk. "If!" he muttered, peevishly. "To think that the whole thing turns on a miserable 'if!' I must contrive some way of finding out whether that will—or any will—was ever made. There must be no defective nor missing links in this chain, nothing to invite the meddling of the cursed fate which has followed me so long. The Major must not be permitted to die, one of these days,—by the interposition of Providence and delirium tremens, or something vastly like it,—and leave me with an abortive plan and a portionless fiancée. To be sure, I should not be long in getting rid of the latter, but there would be no help for the former."
His soliloquy had brought him to his office door. Suddenly bethinking himself, then, that a certain patient had been overlooked in the catalogue of the day's duties, he called for his horse, and set out to make good the omission.
His road led past the Bergan estate. As he was galloping swiftly onward, absorbed in his own reflections, he heard an energetic "Halloo!" Pulling up his horse, and looking back, he beheld Major Bergan leaning over a small gate, which opened into the fields near the quarter.