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After about twenty minutes' walking Helmsley's step grew easier and more springy, almost he felt young, almost he pictured himself living for another ten years in health and active mental power.
"Your happiness then was a mere matter of youth and animal spirits," interposed Vesey. "I thought you would say that!" and again a faint smile illumined Helmsley's features. "It is just what every one would say. Yet the young are often much more miserable than the old; and while I grant that youth may have had something to do with my past joy in life, it was not all. No, it certainly was not all.
Kissing David Helmsley's letter, she put it in her bosom, he had asked that its contents might be held sacred, and that no eyes but her own should scan his last words, and to her that request of a dead man was more than the command of a living King. The list of bequests she held in her hand ready to show Sir Francis Vesey when he entered, which he did as soon as she touched the bell.
"Her time for vanity is past," said Helmsley, sententiously "She is an old maid." "Old maid be shot!" exclaimed Angus, impetuously "By Jove! Any man might be proud to marry her!" A keen, sharp glance, as incisive as any that ever flashed up and down the lines of a business ledger, gleamed from under Helmsley's fuzzy brows. "Would you?" he asked. "Would I marry her?"
"I'm not a brave man," he said "I hope I haven't given you that idea. I'm an awful funk at times." "When are those times?" and Mary smiled demurely, as she put the question. Again the warm blood rushed up to his brows. "Well, please don't laugh! I'm afraid horribly afraid of women!" Helmsley's old eyes sparkled. "Upon my word!" he exclaimed "That's a funny thing for you to say!"
Helmsley's age and over-wrought condition made his movements nervous and faltering at this point, and nothing could exceed the firm care and delicate solicitude with which his guide helped him over this last difficulty of the road. She was indeed strong, as she had said, she seemed capable of lifting him bodily, if need were yet she was not a woman of large or robust frame.
I can do nothing for you nothing! you are David Helmsley's heiress, and with such wealth as he has left you, you might marry a prince of the royal blood if you cared for princes are to be bought, like anything else in the world's market! But you are not of the world you never were and now now the world will take you! The world leaves nothing alone that has any gold upon it!"
With pleasing haste the clerk put together the voluminous folios of blue paper from which he had been reading, and quickly made his exit, while Sir Francis, still standing, put on his glasses and unfolded the one sheet of note-paper on which Helmsley's communication was written. Glancing it up and down, he turned it over and over then addressed himself to the attentively waiting Benson. "So Mr.
Mary smiled, and the soft colour flew over her face at the suggestion. "Oh, not for a long time yet, David!" she replied. "Angus has not yet finished his book, and even when it is all done, he has to get it published. He won't have the banns put up till the book is accepted." "Won't he?" And Helmsley's eyes grew very wistful. "Why not?" "Well, it's for quite a good reason, after all," she said.
The whirr and noise of the panting engine confused Helmsley's ears and dazed his brain, after his months of seclusion in such a quiet little spot as Weircombe, and he was seized with quite a nervous terror and doubt as to whether he would be able, after all, to undertake the journey he had decided upon, alone.
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