rose. That his presence called those blushes none could doubt; and in Mr. Carlton’s low tones, as he addressed her, there was a trembling tenderness which told its own tale. Never man loved woman more passionately than he, the surgeon, had learnt to love Laura Chesney.
“Oh, Laura! I did not expect this. I thought you were out.”
“No. Jane and Lucy went to church, but I stayed with papa. When did you return?” she softly whispered.
“To-night only. Laura!” he continued, his tone one of wild fervour, “to meet you thus, unlooked-for, seems like a sudden glimpse of heaven.”
One lingering pressure of the hands, and then Mr. Carlton was on his way down again, for Pompey had appeared on the scene. Laura listened for the closing of the hall door; for the last echoes of the footfalls on the gravel-path, footfalls that for her ear were as the sweetest music; and when they had died away to silence, she heaved a sobbing sigh, born of intense emotion, and stepped on to her father’s room.
Just as Mr. Carlton had gone through the gate, two ladies came up to it—or, rather, a lady and a little girl. He was passing them with merely a word of salutation, a lift of the hat, when the lady stopped, and addressed him in low and gentle tones.
“You are back then, Mr. Carlton. Have you seen papa?”
“I have been paying him a visit now, Miss Chesney. He is very considerably better. The pain has not gone, but I am sure it is nothing like what it was, even when I left. A day or two, and he will, I hope, be downstairs again.”
The little girl came round to him with a dancing step. “Mr. Carlton, I want you to get papa well soon. He has promised when he is well to take me out for a whole day’s holiday.”
“Very well, Miss Lucy,” answered the surgeon, in a merry tone. “I’ll get him well with all due speed, for the sake of your whole day’s holiday. Good night, young lady; good night, Miss Chesney.”
He held the gate open for them to pass through, lifted his hat again, closed the gate after them, and went on down the road. The moon had grown brilliantly bright, and he glanced up at it. Not in reality to look at it, for he had plunged into deep thought. The few words he had spoken to Captain Chesney had brought vividly before him his past life; its good and ill doings, its discomforts, its recklessness, its sins. His father, who was in the same profession as himself, a surgeon, in large practice in a populous but not desirable quarter of London, lying eastward, had been rather given to sins and recklessness himself, and no good example had our been placed before the boy, Lewis. Had his mother lived, as he remarked to Captain Chesney, things would have been widely different. Allowed to have his own way in childhood, allowed to have it in youth and in early manhood, insomuch as that no control or supervision was exercised over him, no fatherly guidance was extended to him, it was little wonder that he got into various dangers and difficulties; and, as a sequence, into displeasure with his father. When an array of debts was brought home to stare old Mr. Carlton in the face, he flew into a terrible passion, and swore that he would not pay them. A half peace was patched up after a while; the debts were settled, and Mr. Carlton the younger established himself at South Wennock; but the father and son still continued much at variance, no cordiality existing between them. Now the thing was altered. Mr. Carlton senior on a bed of sickness was quite a different man from Mr. Carlton in rude health, and he had allowed himself to be fully reconciled to his son. He had shown him his will, in which he, Lewis, who named sole heir; and he had hinted at the good round sum laid by in bank securities. And Mr. Carlton stepped on now, dreaming a glowing dream; a dream that had become the one wild hope of his life—a marriage with Laura Chesney.
His supper was laid ready when he got home. Before sitting down to it, he drew three or four letters from his pocket, took them from the envelopes, and began to look over them as if for the purpose of sorting.
“I must keep that,” he said to himself, glancing down the writing of the one; “these I suppose may be burnt. Stay, though—I’ll have my supper first.”
He sat down before the tray and cut himself wine meat. Barely had he begun to eat it when Ben came in with a face of contrition, holding a note in his hand.
“What now, boy?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“I’m sorry I forgot it, air, when you asked me. I put it in the letter-rack in the surgery, and it clean slipped my memory. It was brought here, sir, the same night that you went away.”
Mr. Carlton, laying down his knife and fork, opened the note and ran his eyes over its contents. Ben, who had gone away, heard his master shouting to him.—
“Come beck, sir! Who brought this?”
Ben could not tell who brought it: except