Worst came to the worst before twenty-four hours had passed. The
rector received word that Mrs Irving was rapidly failing, and went to
act the part of spiritual counsellor to the invalid, and sympathetic
friend to the suffering girl.
When he returned his mother watched his face with eager, anxious
eyes. He looked haggard and ill, as if he had passed through a
severe ordeal. He could talk of nothing but the beautiful and brave
girl, who was about to lose her one worshipped companion, and who ere
many hours passed would stand utterly alone in the world.
"I never saw you so affected before by the troubles and sorrows of
your parishioners," Mrs Stuart said. "I wonder, Arthur, why you take
the sorrows of this family so keenly to heart."
The young rector looked his mother full in the face with calm, sad
eyes. Then he said slowly: "I suppose, mother, it is because I love Joy Irving with all my
heart. You must have suspected this for some time. I know that you
have, and that the thought has pained you. You have had other and
more ambitious aims for me. Earnest Christian and good woman that
you are, you have a worldly and conventional vein in your nature,
which makes you reverence position, wealth and family to a marked
degree. You would, I know, like to see me unite myself with some
royal family, were that possible; failing in that, you would choose
the daughter of some great and aristocratic house to be my bride.
Ah, well, dear mother, you will, I know, concede that marriage
without love is unholy. I am not able to force myself to love some
great lady, even supposing I could win her if I did love her."
"But you might keep yourself from forming a foolish and unworthy
attachment," Mrs Stuart interrupted. "With your will-power, your
brain, your reasoning faculties, I see no necessity for your allowing
a pretty face to run away with your heart. Nothing could be more
unsuitable, more shocking, more dreadful, than to have you make that
girl your wife, Arthur."
Mrs Stuart's voice rose as she spoke, from a quiet reasoning tone to
a high, excited wail. She had not meant to say so much. She had
intended merely to appeal to her son's affection for her, without
making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy's mother; she thought
merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise himself
at present with the girl, through an excess of sympathy. But already
she had said enough to arouse the young man into a defender of the
girl he loved.