Part 98 (1/2)

'But what are you doing? That is beautiful!--but you are making it a great deal too elaborate and difficult for my scholar. She is not far enough advanced for that.'

'I'll take another piece of paper, then, and begin again. What do you want?'

'Just a tree, lightly sketched, and a bit of rock under it; something like that. She is a beginner.'

'A tree and a rock?' said Pitt. 'Well, here you shall have it. But, Queen Esther, this sort of thing cannot go on, you know?'

'For a while it must.'

'For a very little while! In fact, I do not see how it can go on at all. I will go and see your school madam and tell her you have made another engagement.'

'But every honest person fulfils the obligations he is under, before a.s.suming new ones.'

'That's past praying for!' said Pitt, with a shake of his head. 'You have a.s.sumed the new ones. Now the next thing is to get rid of the old.

I must go back to my work soon; and, Queen Esther, your majesty will not refuse to go with me?'

He turned and stretched out his hand to her as he spoke. In the action, in the intonation of the last words, in the look which went with them, there was something very difficult for Esther to withstand. It was so far from presuming, it was so delicate in its urgency, there was so much wistfulness in it, and at the same time the whole magnetism of his personal influence. Esther placed her hand within his, she could not help that; the bright colour flamed up in her cheeks; words were not ready.

'What are you thinking about?' said he.

'Papa,' Esther said, half aloud; but she was thinking of a thousand things all at once.

'I'll undertake the colonel,' said he, going back to his drawing, without letting go Esther's hand. 'Colonel Gainsborough is not a man to be persuaded; but I think in this case he will be of my mind.'

He was silent again, and Esther was silent too, with her heart beating, and a quiet feeling of happiness and rest gradually stealing into her heart and filling it; like as the tide at flood comes in upon the empty sh.o.r.e. Whatever her father might think upon the just mooted question, those two hands had found each other, once and for all. Thoughts went roving, aimlessly, meanwhile, as thoughts will, in such a flood-tide of content. Pitt worked on rapidly. Then a word came to Esther's lips.

'Pitt, you have become quite an Englishman, haven't you?'

'No more than you are a Englishwoman.'

'I think, I am rather an American,' said Esther; 'I have lived here nearly all my life.'

'Do you like New York?'

'I was not thinking of New York. Yes, I like it. I think I like any place where my home is.'

'Would you choose your future home rather in Seaforth, or in London?

You know, _I_ am at home in both.'

Esther would not speak the woman's answer that rose to her lips, the immediate response, that where he was would be what she liked best. It flushed in her cheek and it parted her lips, but it came not forth in words. Instead came a cairn question of business.

'What are the arguments on either side?'

'Well,' said Pitt, shaping his 'rock' with bold strokes of the pencil, 'in Seaforth the sun always s.h.i.+nes, or that is my recollection of it.'

'Does it not s.h.i.+ne in London?'

'No, as a rule.'