“I shouldn't care for you so much.”
“Do you care very much for me?” he asked rather wistfully, and came to where she was standing with one foot on the fender.
“You know I would do anything in the world you asked,” she answered in a low voice.
“Some day I may claim your promise.”
“You know I always keep my promises,” she said.
The dressing bell clanged loudly through the house. Sylvester hurriedly departed so as to dress in time for dinner. But Ella lingered by the fire, the girl in her wondering whether she had said too much, and the woman in her filled with a delicious pity for the strong-brained, deep-natured man who seemed dumbly to be holding out his hands for her love. She gave it generously and gratefully. Compared with him, all other men seemed of small account, and in her aunt Lady Milmo's house, where most of her life was spent, she had seen all the sorts and conditions of males that a well-to-do collector of minor celebrities can gather around her in London. But to her direct mind the truest men of her acquaintance were Matthew Lanyon, her former guardian, whose title of uncle was purely one of courtesy, and Sylvester, with whom the old quasi-cousinly relations were being transmuted into sweeter ties.
CHAPTER II—THE SHADOW IN A LIFE
Father and son sat together in the dining-room, smoking their after-dinner cigars, and speaking very little, as their custom was when together. With its snow-white table-cloth set off by the glass and cut flowers and the rich purple of the old port in the decanter; with its picture-hung walls, its massive mahogany sideboard gleaming with silver, amid which displayed itself opulently a huge salver presented to Matthew Lanyon, Esquire, by his fellow-townsmen on the completion of his third year of mayoralty; with its great red-shaded lamp suspended over the table, and its dark marble fireplace,—the room had an air of warmth and generous comfort that spoke of a long continuance of worldly ease. In his younger days Matthew Lanyon had roved about the world, picking up much knowledge of men in new lands where life was rude, and a little money wherewith to start a career when he returned to civilisation. His return was speedier than either himself or his friends had anticipated. The latter beheld him married to a sweet flower-like girl whom he had met not long before in Australia; but more than this they did not learn. He was not given to offering information as to his doings, and there was that suggestion of haughtiness behind his frank young smile which forbade questioning. He was there; his wife was there. The friends must accept both on their merits. He had served his articles as a solicitor before leaving England. He turned to his profession for maintenance and bought a share in a cousin's practice in Ayresford. He was to have made his fortune, gone away again with his young wife into the wide world, and seen all the wonders that it held. But as in the case of many other young dreams, it seemed otherwise to the gods. Wealth had come quickly, and he had added gradually to his little home until it had become a great house, and his cousin had died, and his wife had died, and in Ayresford he had lived all the time, married and widowed, and now the longing for change had gone, and in Ayresford he hoped that he himself would die, in the home endeared to him by so many memories, in the bed consecrated by the pale sweet shadow of her who even now seemed to lie by his side.