Radiometry & Detector Model

Andrew Goldsmith's impatience was extreme. He was angry with Selina for failing to win his grandson's love, and angry at the thought of Martin not marrying. That would be a triumph for his enemy. If he could only argue with Martin, he fancied something could be done, but all he had to say must be translated by the tutor, who was in Sidney's pay. This barrier of language between himself and Sophy's son was another of the wrongs Sidney had inflicted on him.

His longing to see Margaret and Dorothy was intense, but he never gave expression to it. Only when kneeling before the crucifix, near the entrance of his cave, did he utter either of their names. In this place alone did he find any moments of comparative freedom from the mysterious malady which was consuming him. The damp, rocky roof and walls, the hard, rough floor, the utter stillness and wildness of the place were like a bit of his old life when he sought refuge in his cave on the mountains. Sometimes, when he managed to elude the vigilance of his grandfather, he made his way to this spot, and felt, for an hour or two, something of the restful, satisfied feelings we all enjoy when we are at home. When, as he stood at the low mouth of the cave, and lifted up his heavy eyes to the worn, grotesque, pathetic figure of Christ upon the cross, that familiar sight on which his childish gaze had so often rested, then he could almost fancy that a step or two would bring him out upon the sharp, ice-bound peaks, where the biting wind would string up his relaxed frame, and send the blood tingling through his languid veins.

The summer and autumn passed by, but Margaret and Dorothy did not return to Brackenburn.

Sidney intended to keep Christmas there again, and their visit was reserved for the winter. Philip and Hugh also, though they spent a week now and then shooting on the moors, did not give up the whole of the long vacation to Martin, as they had done the year before. Some of the time was spent at Apley, where their intercourse with their cousins at the Rectory had returned to its former channel, excepting with Phyllis, whose absence when Philip was staying at the Hall was as regular as his presence there.

Laura was for once perplexed and uncertain. She could not forget that though Philip was at present only a medical student he might some day be a millionaire. She had means of setting an inquiry afloat as to Sidney's position in the city; but the answers she got were contradictory, and in consequence unsatisfactory. Ought she, in Phyllis's interests, to attach him once more to her? or should she see him carry off a rich heiress like Dorothy before her very eyes? She could not forgive herself for having been too precipitate in breaking off his long engagement with Phyllis, but she did not think it would be impossible to renew it.

She summoned Phyllis home early in October, while Philip was still at Apley, in order to see how the young people would conduct themselves toward one another. But fortune did not favor her.

Philip and Dorothy met Phyllis unexpectedly in the avenue between the Hall and the Rectory. The color mounted up to Philip's face, and there was a slight embarrassment in his manner; but Phyllis was quite self-possessed, and spoke to him in a cordial and cousinly tone.

"Why! Philip, it is ages since I saw you," she said gayly, "and now you have quite a professional air. Pray do not ask me after my health, dear Dr. Martin. I cannot let you feel my pulse, or look at my tongue."

"I need not," he answered; "you never had anything the matter with you, and you have not now. I wish some of our poor hospital patients had your chances of keeping well."

"He talks of the hospital immediately," she rejoined, tossing her head, "and he smells of his drugs.

O Philip! Philip! that you should come to this! You are a lost man."

"I suppose I am," he said, laughing; "I am lost to my old life, but I like the new one as much.

Phyllis, it seems like a hundred years since I saw you."

"That is what makes you look so old," she retorted; "a hundred years, added to the twenty-three I know of, must make a tremendous difference. How much more aged you are than me!"

"Do you think he looks older?" asked Dorothy rather anxiously. "Mrs. Martin is afraid he works too hard, and she is troubled a little about it."

"So are you," rejoined Phyllis.

"Yes, I am," she replied steadily, yet a little shyly. She was more disturbed by this unexpected meeting than either of the other two were. It seemed to her that it must be inexpressibly painful to them both, and that it would be better for her to go away.

"Well, good-by," said Phyllis airily; "here is the gate. Open it for me, and shut it behind me, or we shall have your Scotch cattle in our glebe. We shall see you at the Rectory soon, Philip?"

Philip opened the gate, and he and Dorothy stood in silence watching her, until, as she turned a corner that would hide her from their sight, she looked round and kissed her hand to them.

"How pretty she is!" exclaimed Philip. It astonished him that he felt so little agitation upon seeing her for the first time. She was very pretty; very fair. "But if she be not fair for me, what care I how fair she be?" he said to himself, feeling the very spirit of Wither's old poem. The face beside him, not so faultless as Phyllis's, was more beautiful to him for its expression of almost timid sympathy with his supposed grief. Dorothy's eyes looked wistfully into his.

"I cannot understand how or why I loved her," he went on in a low tone. "I suppose it was because I grew up with the idea that she was to be my wife. Not at home, but at the Rectory she was always called my little wife. So it grew with my growth."

"It must have been a great sorrow to you," murmured Dorothy.

"It was the uprooting of a fancy, not a sorrow," he said; "I am thankful it was torn up like the weed it was. A weed! Yes; and it would have been a noxious weed, poisoning my whole life. It is compensation enough for losing the position for which Phyllis would have married me."

They walked on under the overarching trees, with the setting sun throwing long shadows before them as they moved side by side. A few fallen leaves lay upon the road, or whirled merrily around them in the evening wind.

"There is only one girl who is like my mother," he said suddenly, "and if I could hope to win her

—if it was in years to come—if she would wait for me——"

"Who is it?" asked Dorothy tremulously, as he paused; and she looked up into his face with a pained expression. So soon to have forgotten his love to Phyllis—and to love again!

"Why, Dorothy!" he exclaimed, "there is nobody in the world like my mother but you! Don't you feel it? My father is always pointing it out. Will you not some day forget my foolish fancy for Phyllis, and believe that I love you, and only you, with all my heart? I have loved you ever since we were at

Cortina and found out poor Martin."

Dorothy made no answer. Her heart beat so quickly that she knew she could not control her voice or her tears if she attempted to speak. Her love for him dated farther back than his for her.

"You think me fickle, and that I fall in love too easily," he said in tones of deprecating earnestness, "but set me a time, let me prove myself in earnest. I had not seen you when I was inextricably bound to Phyllis. Oh! I love you quite differently; I think of you as if you were my conscience. I try to see myself as you see me; and when I do I feel how unworthy I am of you."

"No, no," she answered, between laughing and sobbing; "unworthy of me!"

"Then you will give me time to prove that I love you," he said, "and to give me a chance of winning your love."

"There is no need of that," she whispered.

"Is that true?" he cried, seizing her hands, and gazing eagerly into her face. "Do you mean that you have loved me, blind idiot that I was? Do you mean that you were not disgusted by me when I was playing the forlorn lover, and must needs be sent abroad to cure me of my folly? O Dorothy! if I could only make you forget what a fool I made of myself!"

"I was so sorry for you," she said pityingly, "and I would have done all I could to save you from your sorrow. But it is best as it is, perhaps."

"A thousand times best!" he exclaimed. "Ever since we were at Cortina you have been in my heart of hearts; and I understand a little now the sacred mystery that a true marriage must be."