Those two people had both a good deal to think about when they parted.

As for Evelyn the agitation of telling her own story and the extraordinary commotion which had been produced in her mind by the suggestion of going home, affected her like an illness. As she escaped from the inroad of the Stanhope children, all much surprised and indignant at being kept out, a thing which had never happened in their experience before, and made her way almost like a fugitive to the seclusion of her own room, she felt all the languor and exhaustion of a patient who had gone through a severe bodily crisis. It was over and she felt no pain—on the contrary that sensation of relief which is one of the most beatific in nature, had stolen through her relaxed limbs and faintly throbbing head. The ordeal was over, and it had been less terrible than she had feared. The man whom she had consented to marry, and with whose life her own would henceforward be identified, had not disappointed her, as it was possible he might have done. He was not a perfect man. He had been careless, very careless of those children who ought (she thought) to have been his first care. But otherwise he was true. There was no fictitious show about him, no pretension. He had been, she felt sure, as good a husband to that poor young creature who was dead as any man could be. Poor Mary! her story was so simple, so pretty and full of tenderness as he told it. Evelyn had liked him better for every word. Had she lived!—ah, had she lived! That would have been a different matter altogether. In that case James Rowland would probably have become foreman at the foundry, and remained a highly respectable working man all his life, bringing up his children in the natural way to follow his own footsteps. Would it have been perhaps better so? It would have been more natural, far more free of complications, without any of the difficulties which she could not help foreseeing. These difficulties would be neither few nor small. Two children brought up by their aunt Jane, in an atmosphere strongly shadowed by the foundry, to be suddenly transplanted to a large country house full of luxury and leisure, and the habits of an altogether different life—and not children either but grown up, eighteen and twenty! She drew a long breath, and put her hands together with an involuntary drawing together of her forces. Here was a thing to look forward to! But as for Rowland himself he had come through that ordeal, which was in one sense a trial of his real mettle, carried on before the most clear-sighted tribunal, before a judge whose look went through and through him, though not a word was said to put him on his guard, most satisfactorily, a sound man and true, with his heart in the right place and no falseness about him. It was true that in one respect he was very wrong. He had neglected the children: on this subject there could be no doubt. He had no right to forget that they were growing up, that their homely aunt, who was as good to them as if they were her own, was not all they wanted, though it might have been sufficient when they were little children. Miss Ferrars did not excuse him for this, but she forgave him, which was perhaps better.

She regarded the prospect thus opening before her with a half amused sensation of dismay and horror. Oh, it would be no amusing matter! Her mind took a rapid survey of the situation, and a shiver ran over her. It would be she, probably, who would have to bear the brunt. He perhaps would not remark, as a woman would, though he was their father. “A kick that scarce would move a horse may kill a sound divine.” Their defects would probably not be apparent to him, and he would have the strong claim of paternal love to carry him through everything. On the whole, perhaps, it was better that there should be something to do of this strenuous description. It would keep the too-much well-being in hand. Two people very well off, able to give themselves everything they wanted, contented (more or less) with each other, were apt to fall into a state of existence which was not elevated, especially when they were middle-aged and the glamour of youth and happy love, and all the sentiment of that period did not exist for them. Evelyn looked upon married life with something of the criticism of a woman long unmarried. It was often a selfish life. Selfishness never comes to such a climax as when it is practised by two, in each other’s interests, and does not seem to be selfishness at all. When the horizon is limited by the wants and wishes of us, it is more subtly and exquisitely bound in, than when the centre is me. In such circumstances people are incapable of being ashamed of themselves, while a selfish solitary sometimes is. But the children! that restored the balance. There would be enough to keep a woman in her sober senses, to neutralise the deadening effects of prosperity, in that. As she laid herself down upon her bamboo couch to rest a little, she laughed to herself at the picture of too great quiet, too perfect external well-being that had been in her mind. There would be a few thorns in the pillow—it would not be all repose and tranquility. She might make her mind easy about that.

The other thing that moved her was the suggestion of going home. Home meant to Evelyn the county in which she had spent her life, the house in which she had been born. Nothing more likely than that the very dwelling was in the market, that he might buy it—that she the last Ferrars might recover possession of the house of her fathers. She had heard something to this effect with that acuteness to catch a half-said inference in respect to anything that is of personal interest which is so remarkable. Had it concerned any property on earth but Langley Ferrars, she would never have caught the words: but because it was about her old home she had heard what two men were saying in the crowd of a station hall—“A property in Huntingdonshire,” “dirt cheap,” “last man couldn’t keep it up.” She had divined from this that her home was to be bought, that it could yet be recovered. Oh no, no, she cried to herself, covering her face with her hands, not for anything in the world! To go back there where she had been a happy girl, where all her dreams of love and happiness had taken place, where the famous oaks and bucks of Selston, which was his home, were visible from the windows! Oh no, no—oh no, no: that indeed was more than she could bear. In Scotland it would be another matter. It was no doubt the very thing which a kind man without very fine preceptions would do, to buy back her home for her, to take her there in triumph. A thrill of almost physical terror came over her. “Oh no,” she said to herself, “oh no, no, no!” These were the two things that disturbed the dreamy calm of that sensation of trial over, the kind of moral convalescence in which she found herself. They came through the misty quiet with flashes of alarm. But, on the whole, Evelyn felt as if she had been ill and was getting better, slowly coming round to a world which was changed indeed, and had lost something, but also had gained something, a world with no vague outlines in it or uncertainty, but clearly defined, spread out like a map before her. Perhaps there was something to regret in the old solitude to which her subdued life could retire out of all its troublesome conditions, and be its own mistress. But solitude, though it may be soothing, is not cheerful: and if she relinquished that, there was surely something in the constant companionship of one who had the highest regard for her, thought the very best of her, looked upon all her ways and words with admiration which should make up. He was a good honest man. He rang as true as a silver bell. There was nothing in him to be ashamed of. He was kind and genuine, with right thoughts and no false shame, but for that unaccountable failure about the children—a man as good as any she had met with in all her life. And to say there was no romance about the business, was to say the most foolish untruthful thing. Why it was all romance, far more than the girl and boy love-story, where they ran away with each other in defiance of every consideration! Here was a sober man, long accustomed to his own way, and to moving lightly unimpeded about the earth, a prosaic man, thinking a good deal of the world, who had suddenly turned aside out of his way, to take note of a neglected woman in a corner, and to raise her up over the heads of all the people who had pitied her. She would have been more than woman had she not felt that. To be able to do favours where she had received them, to give help with a liberal hand where she had been compelled to accept it in little, and perhaps with a grudge. Was it not romance that she who had nothing, should all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, have much and be rich, when she had been poor. It was in reality as great a romance as if he had been King Cophetua and she the beggar maid—almost more so, for Evelyn Ferrars was not beautiful as the day. She was to her own consciousness faded and old. This was stating the case much too strongly, but it was how a woman, such as she was, judges herself. If James Rowland was not a romantic lover, who was? He was more romantic than any Prince Charming that ever could be.

Mr. Rowland himself went away from this interview with feelings which were almost in a greater commotion than those of Evelyn. He was excited by going back upon the old life which had died out of his practical mind so completely, and which was to him as a tale that is told—yet which lay there, all the same, an innocent sweet memory deprived of all pain, a story of a young man and a young woman, both of whom had disappeared under the waves and billows of life—the young man, a well-looking fellow in his way, just as much as the young woman who had died. Mr. Rowland, the great engineer, was not even much like him, that hardheaded young fellow with his books, working out his diagrams on the clean kitchen table, and studying and toiling over his figures. How that fellow pegged away! James Rowland at forty-eight never opened a book. His calculations for practical work came to him as easy as a. b. c. He read his paper and the magazines when he saw them, but as for scientific works, never opened one, and did not think much of theoretical problems. And then the little house that was not far from the foundry, and the little clean bright pretty wife always ready and looking out for her husband, and the baby crying, and the young man coming in in his grimy fustian—it was a pretty picture, a charming story such as brings the tears to the eyes. She died, poor thing—they always have a sad end these little tales of real life. This was how he could not help looking at that story which he had just told though it was the story of his own life. Now that he thought of it he could have given a great many more details, although he had also forgotten many. It was a pretty story. There were a great many such stories in the world, and when the wife died and the little house fell to pieces, it was not at all unusual that the poor young fellow went to the bad. It was a good thing he had not done so in this case.

And then there came back to him with a shock that strange discovery about the children. Good heavens! to think they were grown up, those little things! The little one was a baby when he had seen her last—his paternal feelings had not been very strongly roused. To put them with their mother’s sister and persuade her to take the full charge of them had been evidently far the best thing to do. She was a good sort of woman who had no children of her own, and they were to her as if they had been her own, which was everything that could be desired. To make sure that they wanted for nothing, and that they should have kindness and affection par-dessus le marchÉ was everything. Even now he did not see what more he could have done. He could not have brought them to India, where for a long time he had no settled place, and where, as everybody knows, children cannot live. He had done on the whole the very best thing for them. But it was startling to think that they were children of eighteen and twenty. Their aunt had sent him their photographs on various occasions, and he had replied in a way which did not displease her by adding on twenty pounds to his next cheque, and beseeching her to have them better dressed. Queer little things they had looked, not like the children at the Station. He had taken it for granted that Jane had not much taste for dress, but that when she grew up, the little one would change that. They got to know by instinct what was becoming as they grew up, those little things: so he was easy in his mind on that subject. Perhaps he had not thought of going home till it came suddenly into his mind, to please Miss Ferrars. Of course that was what would please her most, to have a home in England. She looked like a home in England. She was not a Station lady, full of picnics and dances. A large peaceful country house with fine trees and a beautiful garden, and a green fragrant park in which she could walk with him, that was what looked most like her: and she should have it! If Mr. Rowland had heard of Langley Ferrars which was in the market, I know very well what he would have done. He would have telegraphed to his man of business in London, regardless of expense, directing him to lose not a moment in securing that place. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to do. When a man is rich, a man of James Rowland’s mind, giving presents is his easiest way of showing his kindly feelings—and it is not a bad way. And all the explanations in the world would never have got it into his kind head that she would not have liked such a present as that. Her own home restored to her, where she could live at ease, not poorly as her ruined father, poor gentleman, had been compelled to do—but lavishly if she liked, carrying things with a high hand, showing all the neighbours, who perhaps had looked down upon her in her poverty, how well she had done for herself. There was nothing which would have pleased James Rowland more than this. But fortunately he never had heard that Langley Ferrars was in the market. He was not even aware indeed at this early period where his future wife had lived, or what the name of her home had been.

But she had said Scotland, which would be the best of all: and then suddenly had appeared before his eyes a vision of a house which he had often looked at when he went down the Clyde upon a holiday, or when there was some work at Greenock which he was entrusted with, as sometimes happened. Who can tell what visions of this kind steal into the brains of the working men in their noisy excursions, or the foundry lads with their sweethearts? Oftenest it is a cottage, perhaps a little cockney villa on the edge of a loch. “I’d like to tak’ ye there,” said with glowing eyes and all the ardour of youthful dreams: or, “Eh, man, if there was a bit housie like yon ahint ye, to gang back to when ye were past work,”—such speeches are common in the mouths of the excursionists, who live and die, and are contented enough, in the high “lands” and common stairs of the huge dull town. But James Rowland had been more ambitious. What he had remarked most had been a house, with a white colonnade round it, standing up on a green knoll at the end of a peninsula which overlooked the Clyde. There was one special spot from which he remembered to have watched for it, through the opening in the trees, not saying anything to any one, not even to Mary, but watching till it became visible—not a villa, nor a cottage, but a great house, with beautiful woods round it, and soft green lawns sloping downwards towards the noble river-sea, which just there flowed out into the opening of a loch. It suddenly came before him in a moment while he walked through the cantonments towards his own lodging in the arid enceinte of the Station. Such a contrast! He felt as if he were again standing on the deck of the river steamboat, watching for the white walls, the pillars of the colonnade, as they appeared through the trees. He knew exactly at what moment the trees would stand aside, ranged into groups and lines, and the house would come into sight. He thought that if he had been blind, he would yet have known exactly when that opening came.

That was the place for him! His heart gave a leap, almost as it had done when Evelyn Ferrars had given him her hand. It was the next thing almost—the fulfilment of a dream older by far than his knowledge of Evelyn Ferrars. Rosmore! To think that he should come to that; that it should be possible for him, the lad who had watched it so often coming in sight, to call it his own! But it was not yet sure by any means whether he would ever call it his own. He was rich enough to buy it, to improve it, to fit it up as it never had been fitted up before, but whether he would get it or not, remained still to be seen. The owner would have to be tempted with a fancy price, more money than it was worth or could bring: for the owner was a great personage, a man who was not to be supposed ready to offer one of his places to a chance buyer. Rowland did not mind the fancy price, and he enjoyed the thought of the diplomacy that would be required, and all the advances and retirings. It would be a home fit for her. She would bring the best people round her wherever she was. It should be hers, that home of his dreams, settled on her—her dower house—when he was out of the way: but he did not wish to think of being out of the way. He preferred to think of happiness and dignity and rest in that stately yet modest place, not too grand, quite simple indeed, not like the castellated absurdities of the Glasgow merchants. Among houses, it was like her among women, the most unpretending, the most sincere, everyway the best!

And, then, with a sudden prick of his heart, he remembered the children. Oh, the children! To think that they could be so old as that, and that it had remained for her to find it out! Twenty! It was not possible little Archie could be that age. What a little chubby fellow he was, with a face as round as an apple, and little rosy cheeks—so like Mary, her very image. It had always been pleasanter to think of him like that, than to identify the little scrubby boy in the photographs poor Jane kept sending; or the lean lad who, he now remembered, had appeared on the last one. He had torn it up, as certainly a libel on his son, not at all the kind of picture which he could have wished to set up on his chimney-piece, and point out complacently to visitors as “my boy.” He remembered this incident of the photograph perfectly now, and that he refused angrily to accept that as a portrait of Archie. “The photograph you sent me was a mistake, I suppose,” he had written to his sister-in-law; “it is quite impossible it could be my boy;” and he forgot what explanation she made. He was not, indeed, very attentive to her letters. He glanced at them to see that the children were well, but he had seldom patience to read all the four pages. Jane’s style and her handwriting, and the very look of her letters had been vexatious to him for many years past. They suggested having been written on a kitchen table with a pen that was greasy. The very outside of them coming in the bag along with his business letters and his invitations gave Rowland a little shock. He preferred that other people should not see him receive these queer missives, the very envelopes of which looked common, not like the others. Now it occurred to him, with a pang, that it was no mistake, that the unwashed-looking lad, with the vulgar, ill-cut clothes was probably his son after all. The idea was horrible to him, but he was glad for one thing that he had torn the photograph up, and could not be made to produce it to show Evelyn what manner of youth Archie was—if he was like that! And then the baby, whom he had always thought of as the baby, with all the tenderness that belonged to the name. Tenderness! but something else as well—indifference, forgetfulness—or he could never have been so blind, and suffered them to grow up like that. It was a very tormenting and uncomfortable thought, and Rowland was anxious to shake it off. He said to himself that photographs never do justice to the subject; that perhaps the boy might be a fine boy for all that: and finally contrived to elude the whole disagreeable subject by saying to himself how clever it was of her to have made that out about their age! What a clever woman she was; not learned, or that sort of thing, but knowing so much, and so perfect in her manner, and such a true native-born lady. This was her grand quality above all. She said just the right thing, at the right time, never compromising any one, hurting nobody’s feelings. He was himself rather given to treading on people’s toes, and making afterwards the astonishing discovery that they felt it, even though he had meant no harm. But she never did anything like that. She would know how to manage that business about the children, and he had a happy persuasion that everything would go right in her hands.