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Philip smiled, and came to the table where she was drawing. 'Do you know this place? said she, looking up in his face. 'Stylehurst itself! What is it taken from? 'From this pencil sketch of your sister's, which I found in mamma's scrap book. 'You are making it very like, only the spire is too slender, and that tree can't you alter the foliage? it is an ash. 'Is it? I took it for an elm.
Working hard, too, helped him not a little, and conic sections served him almost as well as they served Laura. A more real help was the neighbourhood of Stylehurst. On the first Sunday after receiving Mr. Edmonstone's letter, he went to church there, instead of with the others, to St. Mildred's. They thought it was for the sake of the solitary walk; but he had other reasons for the preference.
It stood at the foot of a magnificent range of beautifully formed hills, where the crescents and villas, white and smart, showed their own insignificance beneath the purple peaks that rose high above them. About ten miles distant, across the hills, was Stylehurst, the parish of the late Archdeacon Morville, and the native place of Philip and his sister Margaret.
'I shall never forget the tufts of lavender round the kitchen garden at Stylehurst. Philip smiled. Charlotte proceeded, and Charles saw Laura's colour deepening as she bent over her work. "Lavender steadfastness Strafford Cordelia in 'King Lear' the late war." How funny! cried Charlotte. 'For hear the next: "Honeysuckle steadfastness Lord Strafford Cordelia the present time."
Edmonstone went to a drawer, took out two or three bundles of old letters, and after searching in them by the fire-light, said 'Ah! here's a little about her; it is in a letter from my sister-in-law, Philip's mother, when they were staying at Stylehurst. 'Who? My father and mother? cried Guy eagerly. 'Did you not know they had been there three or four days?
'MY DEAR PHILIP, Thank you much for writing to me. It was a great comfort to see your writing again, and to hear of your being safe in our own country. We had been very anxious about you, though we did not hear of your illness till the worst was over. I am very glad you are at St. Mildred's, for I am sure Margaret must be very careful of you, and Stylehurst air must be good for you.
'I thought so; but I could not remember, said Philip, turning round, and settling himself for conversation, with much of his ordinary deliberate preparation; 'I hope it was not when I had no command of myself? 'No, you were seldom intelligible, you were generally trying to speak Italian, or else talking about Stylehurst. The only time you mentioned her was the night before the worst.
She told him how often Sir Guy had been at Stylehurst, how he had talked to her about the archdeacon; and especially she remembered his helping her husband one day when he found him trimming the ash over the archdeacon's grave.
'Literary, scientific gossip is worse than gossip in a primary sense, without pretension. 'I am glad you had Stylehurst to go to. How was the old sexton's wife? 'Very well; trotting about on her pattens as merrily as ever. 'Did you go into the garden? 'Yes; Fanny's ivy has entirely covered the south wall, and the acacia is so tall and spreading, that I longed to have the pruning of it.
It was strange that, with so many more important burdens on his mind, it had been this apparent trivial omission, this slight to Stylehurst, that, in both his illnesses, had been the most frequently recurring idea that had tormented him in his delirium.
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