第74章 CHAPTER XIV TOGETHER(4)

"You may think it lucky--or well arranged--but I must differ. I tell you at once that I consider Miss Blake a most pernicious young woman, and as your father I can only express the hope that you do not intend to allow her to re-assert her evil influence over you."

Godfrey was about to answer with wrath, but changed his mind and remained silent. So the topic dropped, but that it stood very straight upon its feet in Mr. Knight's mind was clear from the compression of his thin lips and the ill-humour of his remarks about the coldness and overdone character of the beef and sundry other household matters. As soon as the meal was concluded and he had washed it down with a last glass of water and with a very wry face thanked Providence for all that he had received, he retired into his study and was seen no more till prayer-time.

Nor was he seen then by Godfrey, who had gone out to smoke his pipe since his father could not bear the smell of tobacco in the house, and wandered unconsciously towards the Hall. There he stood, gazing at a light which he knew came from Isobel's window, and lost in this unfruitful contemplation, once more forgot the time. When he arrived home it was to find the house in darkness and a note in his father's handwriting on the hall table requesting him to be careful to lock the door, as everyone had gone to bed.

He went, too, but could not sleep, for, strangely enough, that disturbance of body and spirit which had afflicted Isobel possessed him also. It seemed wonderful to him that he should have found her again, whom he thought to be so utterly lost, and grown so sweet and dear. How could he have lived all this while without her, he wondered, and, another thought, how could he bear to part with her once more?

Oh! she was his life, and--why should they part? She had not minded when he kissed her hands, at which, of course, she might have been angry; indeed, she left them to be kissed for quite a long while, though not half long enough. Perhaps she did not wish that they should part either, or perhaps she only desired that they should be just friends as before. It seemed almost impossible that they could become more than friends, even if she cared to do so, which he could scarcely hope.

What was he? A young fellow, twenty, with only a little money and all his way to make in the world. And what was she? A grand young lady, rather younger than himself, it was true, but seeming years older, who was a great heiress, they said, and expected to marry a lord, someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth, whose fortune had been made for him by other people. Moreover, his father hated her because their religious views were different, and her father hated him, or used to, for other reasons.

Yes, it was quite impossible--and yet Nature seemed to take no account of that: Nature seemed to tell him that it was absolutely possible, and indeed right, and what she, Nature, wished. Also this same persistent Nature seemed to suggest to him that Isobel was her most willing and obedient pupil, and that perhaps if he could look into her heart he would find that she did care, and very much more than for the wealth and the hypothetical lord.

Nature seemed to suggest, too, that Isobel's thoughts were with him at that moment; that she was uncommonly near to him in soul if not in body; that she was thinking about him as he was thinking about her, and saying much the same things to herself as he was saying to himself. Indeed, he even began a whispered conversation with her, of a sort he would not have ventured upon had she been there, pausing between the sentences for her answers, which, as he imagined them, were very satisfactory indeed.

By degrees, however, question and answer grew less frequent and further apart as he dozed off and finally sank into a deep sleep. So deep was it, indeed, that he was awakened only by the clamour of the breakfast bell, and when he arrived downstairs, to be confronted by some cold bacon on an uncovered dish, his father had departed to the Diocesan Conference. Well, this fact had its consolations, and bacon, however cold, with contentment is better than bacon hot where contention is.

So he ate it and anything else he could find with appetite, and then went upstairs to shave and do his hair nicely and to put on a new suit of clothes, which he considered became him. Also, as he had still three-quarters of an hour to spare, he began to write a little poem about Isobel, which was a dismal failure, to tell the truth, since he could think of no satisfactory rhyme to her name, except "O well!"@@which, however he put it, sounded silly.