Say and Seal Volume I Part 76

"You're as like yourself as ever you can be, doctor!" she said, smiling at him. "How you used to try to get round me!"

"I don't remember!" said the doctor. "I am sure I never succeeded, Mrs.

Derrick?"

"I'm afraid you did, sometimes," she said, shaking her head. He smiled a little, and turned the other way.

"Linden, I've been considering the German question."

"Will it please you to state the result?"

"This!" said the doctor. "I have come to the conclusion,--that in order to be One and Somewhat, it is necessary to begin by being Nought and All--Thus ranging myself in security on _both_ sides of a great abyss of metaphysics. What do you think? Unphilosophical?"

"Unsafe--" said Mr. Linden. "And impossible."

"Humph?"--said the doctor. "Nothing is impossible in metaphysics--because you may be on both sides of an abyss, and in the bottom of it!--at once--and without knowing where you are. The angel that rode Milton's sunbeam, you know, was no time at all going from heaven to earth; and I suppose he went the other way as quick."

"I don't see the abyss in that case," said Mr. Linden,--"but

----'Uriel to his charge Returned on that bright beam'--

so probably he did."

"Yes"--said the doctor.--"And my meaning skipped the abyss,--also on a sunbeam. It referred to the unsubstantial means of travelling in use among metaphysicians."

"And among angels."

"That reminds me," said the doctor. And quitting his stand on the rug, which he had taken again, he went over to Faith and sat down by her.

"Is the Nightingale flouris.h.i.+ng on her rose-bush to-day?"

"What, sir?" said Faith, her eyes opening at him a little.

"I beg pardon!" said the doctor. "I have been living in a part of the world, Miss Derrick, where it is the fas.h.i.+on to call things not by their right names. I have got a foolish habit of it. Do you feel quite recovered?"

"Quite. I'm a little tired to-night, perhaps."

"I see you are, and I'll not detain you. Mrs. Custers wants to see you again." He had dropped all banter, and was speaking to her quietly, respectfully, kindly, as he should speak; in a lowered tone, but not so low as to be unheard by others than her.

"I will try to see her again soon--I will try to go very soon," she answered.

"Would you be afraid to go with my father's old stand-bys?--they are safe!"--

"I cannot do that, Dr. Harrison--but I will try to see her soon."

"Can you go without riding?"

"No," she said smiling; "but I must find some other way."

"I won't press that point," said the doctor. "I can't blame you. I must bear that. But--I want for my own sake to have the honour of a little talk with you--I want to explain to you one or two things. Shall you be at leisure to-morrow afternoon?"

"I am hardly _at leisure_ any time, Dr. Harrison. I do not suppose I shall be particularly busy then."

"Then will you take that time for a walk?"

Faith hesitated. "I have very little time, sir."

"But you take time to go out?"

"Not much."

"I will not ask much. A little will do; and so much you owe to skyey influences. You will not refuse me that?"

"I will go, Dr. Harrison," Faith answered after an instant a little soberly. He rose up then; proposed to attend upon Mr. Linden, and they went up stairs together.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Faith was half ready to wish the next day might be rainy; but it rose fair and bright. She must go to walk, probably; and visiters might come. The only thing to be done was to despatch her ordinary duties as quick as possible, prepare her French exercise, and go to her teacher early. Which she did.

She came in with a face as bright as the day, although a little less ready to look in everybody's eyes. There were enough things ready for her. Lessons were pressed rather more steadily than usual, perhaps because they had been neglected a little for the last two days--or hindered; and it was not till one book and another had done its work, till the exercise was copied and various figure puzzles disposed of, that Mr. Linden told her he thought a talking exercise ought to come next,--if she had one ready he should like to have the benefit of it.

"You are tired, Mr. Linden!" said Faith quickly.

"You may begin by giving me the grounds of that conclusion."

"I don't know," she said half laughing,--"I don't see it; but that don't make me know. I was afraid you were tired with this work."

"Very unsafe, Miss Faith, to build up such a superstructure upon grounds that you neither see nor know. I was immediately beginning to question the style of my own explanations this morning."

"Why, sir?"

"If I seem tired, said explanations may have seemed--tiresome."

She looked silently, with a smile, as if questioning the possibility of his thinking so; and her answer did not go to that point.

"You didn't seem tired, Mr. Linden--I had no reason for thinking so, I suppose. I was only afraid. I was going to ask you what Dr. Harrison meant last night by the angel riding upon a sunbeam? I saw you knew what he meant."

Mr. Linden got up and went for a book--then came back to his couch again.

"Precisely what Dr. Harrison meant, Miss Faith, I should not like to say. What he referred to, was a part of Paradise Lost, where the angels set to guard the earth have a messenger.

'Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star.'"

"Who is Uriel? an angel?"