“I have not set eyes on him since he settled in town. He never comes to see us. He is still mourning and moping, I suppose. The world is for the living, not the dead; don't you think so?”
“Yes. He should marry again. A woman of exuberant vitality, who would carry him along with her.”
“We'll have to find him a wife, Mr. Usher,” she replied gaily.
Thus she proved to herself defiantly that all her foolish feeling for Sylvester was dead; that she had also attained a standpoint of generous forgetfulness of wrong.
“And send him out with her to doctor the Colony,” laughed Roderick. “It would be the making of him. As it is, he is a man of fine honour and strong character. Even if one's own spiritual horizon is wider than that bounded by his narrow orthodoxy, yet one can but admire the steadfastness with which he keeps within its limits. I have always had, as you know, a great affection for him.”
The girl's responsive nature was touched by the generous tribute. Roderick took a sudden leap in her esteem. She had her own haunting and miserable ideas as to Sylvester's honour, but the praise pleased her,—the fact of a man's loyalty to the ideal of a friend. At least, so she half consciously analysed her feelings.
The talk went on, and time passed. Lady Milmo's friend departed and mingled in the stream that began to make for Hyde Park Corner and home. She turned to Ella and Roderick.
“The dear, tiresome general has been entertaining me with his corns while I have been dying to hear all about the Colony. And now it's too late. You must come soon and see us, Mr. Usher. It is useless to try to talk here. Why didn't we say Battersea? I'm afraid we 're sad creatures of convention.”
“Miss Defries will make an adequate report, I am sure,” said Roderick. “But Raynham's accession to the cause was my main item of news.”
They all rose and walked to Hyde Park Corner. There he saw the ladies into a cab and swept one of his elaborate bows as they drove off. But he remained for some moments on the curb in front of the Park gates absently watching the hansom until it was lost amid the traffic.