"I think a woman can scarcely help returning a man's love, if he is only as thoroughly in earnest as I am," Gilbert Fenton said to himself, as he sat under the walnut-trees trying to talk pleasantly, and to ignore the serious conversation which had preceded that careless talk.

He saw the Captain alone next day, and told him what had happened. George Sedgewick listened to him with profound attention and a grave anxious face.

"She didn't reject you?" he said, when Gilbert had finished his story.

"Not in plain words. But there was not much to indicate hope. And yet I cling to the fancy that she will come to love me in the end. To think otherwise would be utter misery to me. I cannot tell you how dearly I love her, and how weak I am about this business. It seems contemptible for a man to talk about a broken heart; but I shall carry an empty one to my grave unless I win Marian Nowell for my wife."

"You shall win her!" cried the Captain energetically. "You are a n.o.ble fellow, sir, and will make her an excellent husband. She will not be so foolish as to reject such a disinterested affection. Besides," he added, hesitating a little, "I have a very shrewd notion that all this apparent indifference is only shyness on my little girl's part, and that she loves you."

"You believe that!" cried Gilbert eagerly.

"It is only guesswork on my part, of course. I am an old bachelor, you see, and have had very little experience as to the signs and tokens of the tender pa.s.sion. But I will sound my little girl by and by. She will be more ready to confess the truth to her old uncle than she would to you, perhaps. I think you have been a trifle hasty about this affair.

There is so much in time and custom."

"It is only a cold kind of love that grows out of custom," Gilbert answered gloomily. "But I daresay you are right, and that it would have been better for me to have waited."

"You may hope everything, if you can-only be patient," said the Captain.

"I tell you frankly, that nothing would make me happier than to see my dear child married to a good man. I have had many dreary thoughts about her future of late. I think you know that I have nothing to leave her."

"I have never thought of that. If she were destined to inherit all the wealth of the Rothschilds, she could be no dearer to me than she is."

"Ah, what a n.o.ble thing true love is! And do you know that she is not really my niece--only a poor waif that I adopted fourteen years ago?"

"I have heard as much from her own lips. There is nothing, except some unworthiness in herself, that could make any change in my estimation of her."

"Unworthiness in herself! You need never fear that. But I must tell you Marian's story before this business goes any farther. Will you come and smoke your cigar with me to-night? She is going to drink tea at a neighbour's, and we shall be alone. They are all fond of her, poor child."

"I shall be very happy to come. And in the meantime, you will try and ascertain the real state of her feelings without distressing her in any way; and you will tell me the truth with all frankness, even if it is to be a deathblow to all my hopes?"

"Even if it should be that. But I do not fear such a melancholy result. I think Marian is sensible enough to know the value of an honest man's heart."

Gilbert quitted the Captain in a more hopeful spirit than that in which he had gone to the cottage that day. It was only reasonable that this man should be the best judge of his niece's feelings.

Left alone, George Sedgewick paced the room in a meditative mood, with his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, and his gray head bent thoughtfully.

"She must like him," he muttered to himself. "Why should not she like him?--good-looking, generous, clever, prosperous, well-connected, and over head and ears in love with her. Such a marriage is the very thing I have been praying for. And without such a marriage, what would be her fate when I am gone? A drudge and dependent in some middle-cla.s.s family perhaps--tyrannised over and tormented by a brood of vulgar children."

Marian came in at the open window while he was still pacing to and fro with a disturbed countenance.

"My dear uncle, what is the matter?" she asked, going up to him and laying a caressing hand upon his shoulder. "I know you never walk about like that unless you are worried by something."

"I am not worried to-day, my love; only a little perplexed," answered the Captain, detaining the caressing little hand, and planting himself face to face with his niece, in the full sunlight of the broad bow-window.

"Marian, I thought you and I had no secrets from each other?"

"Secrets, uncle George!"

"Yes, my dear. Haven't you something pleasant to tell your old uncle--something that a girl generally likes telling? You had a visitor yesterday afternoon while I was asleep."

"Mr. Fenton."

"Mr. Fenton. He has been here with me just now; and I know that he asked you to be his wife."

"He did, uncle George."

"And you didn't refuse him, Marian?"

"Not positively, uncle George. He took me so much by surprise, you see; and I really don't know how to refuse any one; but I think I ought to have made him understand more clearly that I meant no."

"But why, my dear?"

"Because I am sure I don't care about him as much as I ought to care. I like him very well, you know, and think him clever and agreeable, and all that kind of thing."

"That will soon grow into a warmer feeling, Marian; at least I trust in G.o.d that it will do so."

"Why, dear uncle?"

"Because I have set my heart upon this marriage. O Marian, my love, I have never ventured to speak to you about your future--the days that must come when I am dead and gone; and you can never know how many anxious hours I have spent thinking of it. Such a marriage as this would secure you happiness and prosperity in the years to come."

She clung about him fondly, telling him she cared little what might become of her life when he should be lost to her. _That_ grief must needs be the crowning sorrow of her existence; and it would matter nothing to her what might come afterwards.

"But my dear love, 'afterwards' will make the greater part of your life.

We must consider these things seriously, Marian. A good man's affection is not to be thrown away rashly. You have known Mr. Fenton a very short time; and perhaps it is only natural you should think of him with comparative indifference."

"I did not say I was indifferent to him, uncle George; only that I do not love him as he seems to love me. It would be a kind of sin to accept so much and to give so little."

"The love will come, Marian; I am sure that it will come."

She shook her head playfully.

"What a darling match-making uncle it is!" she said, and then kissed him and ran away.

She thought of Gilbert Fenton a good deal during the rest of that day; thought that it was a pleasant thing to be loved so truly, and hoped that she might always have him for her friend. When she went out to drink tea in the evening his image went with her; and she found herself making involuntary comparisons between a specimen of provincial youth whom she encountered at her friend's house and Mr. Fenton, very much to the advantage of the Australian merchant.

While Marian Nowell was away at this little social gathering, Captain Sedgewick and Gilbert Fenton sat under the walnut-trees smoking their cigars, with a bottle of claret on a little iron table before them.

"When I came back from India fourteen years ago on the sick-list," began the Captain, "I went down to Brighton, a place I had been fond of in my young days, to recruit. It was in the early spring, quite out of the fashionable season, and the town was very empty. My lodgings were in a dull street at the extreme east, leading away from the sea, but within sight and sound of it. The solitude and quiet of the place suited me; and I used to walk up and down the cliff in the dusk of evening enjoying the perfect loneliness of the scene. The house I lived in was a comfortable one, kept by an elderly widow who was a pattern of neatness and propriety. There were no children; for some time no other lodgers; and the place was as quiet as the grave. All this suited me very well. I wanted rest, and I was getting it.

"I had been at Brighton about a month, when the drawing-room floor over my head was taken by a lady, and her little girl of about five years old.

I used to hear the child's feet pattering about the room; but she was not a noisy child by any means; and when I did happen to hear her voice, it had a very pleasant sound to me. The lady was an invalid, and was a good deal of trouble, my landlady took occasion to tell me, as she had no maid of her own. Her name was Nowell.

"Soon after this I encountered her on the cliff one afternoon with her little girl. The child and I had met once or twice before in the hall; and her recognition of me led to a little friendly talk between me and the mother. She was a fragile delicate-looking woman, who had once been very pretty, but whose beauty had for the most part been worn away, either by ill-health or trouble. She was very young, five-and-twenty at the utmost. She told me that the little girl was her only child, and that her husband was away from England, but that she expected his return before long.

"After this we met almost every afternoon; and I began to look out for these meetings, and our quiet talk upon the solitary cliff, as the pleasantest part of my day. There was a winning grace about this Mrs.

Nowell's manner that I had never seen in any other woman; and I grew to be more interested in her than I cared to confess to myself. It matters little now; and I may freely own how weak I was in those days.

"I could see that she was very ill, and I did not need the ominous hints of the landlady, who had contrived to question Mrs. Nowell's doctor, to inspire me with the dread that she might never recover. I thought of her a great deal, and watched the fading light in her eyes, and listened to the weakening tones of her voice, with a sense of trouble that seemed utterly disproportionate to the occasion. I will not say that I loved her; neither the fact that she was another man's wife, nor the fact that she was soon to die, was ever absent from my mind when I thought of her.

I will only say that she was more to me than any woman had ever been before, or has ever been since. It was the one sentimental episode of my life, and a very brief one.

"The weeks went by, and her husband did not come. I think the trouble and anxiety caused by his delay did a good deal towards hastening the inevitable end; but she bore her grief very quietly, and never uttered a complaint of him in my hearing. She paid her way regularly enough for a considerable time, and then all at once broke down, and confessed to the landlady that she had not a shilling more in the world. The woman was a hard creature, and told her that if that was the case, she must find some other lodgings, and immediately. I heard this, not from Mrs. Nowell, but from the landlady, who seemed to consider her conduct thoroughly justified by the highest code of morals. She was a lone unprotected woman, and how was she to pay her rent and taxes if her best floor was occupied by a non-paying tenant?