“Liddy--you have not told me--the gentleman’s name?” she said, feeling her head go round. “Liddy! I think--I must have seen him before.”
Then Harry could keep himself in no longer. He loathed a scene like every Englishman, but he forgot this, as even Englishmen do in moments of extreme feeling. He fell down on his knees before her, not knowing what he did. “Mother! will you forgive me?” he said. And he did not well know what followed, till the air cleared a little again, and the day came back, and they had put her in the great chair, her face like death, her eyelids quivering, her lips trembling and incapable of speech. She had given a great cry of “Harry! Harry!” which startled all the house.
Then some one else came noisily clattering down the stairs, crossing the hall with a heavy foot. “Where is my little Liddy?” Ralph Joscelyn said; and he added with a certain rough sympathy as he kissed his child, “I told her it was more than she was up to. Let her be, let her be--she will come round. I wanted her to bide in her bed, and I would bring you to her there. Well, and so you’re back, my lass--and welcome! There’s nobody like you to mend her. Did you bring--a doctor with you all the way?”
Then there was a pause; nobody spoke to give any explanation. “Did you bring a doctor with you,” Joscelyn repeated, with a sudden excited burst of laughter, “all the way? or who may this be?”
Harry turned round and came forward into the light, holding out his hand. “You turned me out last time I was here, father,” he said, not able to forego the gratification of this taunt; “I ought to have asked your leave first before I came back now.”
Ralph Joscelyn stood and stared, a dark red colour coming over his face. He looked uncertainly from Liddy to the stranger. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said shortly; then, “Do you mean this is--Harry? that’s what your mother meant, shrieking out, disturbing everybody in the house. Look to your mother, Liddy! Well! you’ve been a long time coming back. You seem,” he said, looking at the new-comer from head to foot, “to have done well for yourself.”
“I have done very well for myself,” Harry said, shortly. “I want help from nobody now.”
“Well, my lad!” said Joscelyn, suddenly striking his hand into that of his son with another hoarse, unsteady laugh, “that’s the best of reasons why you should have whatever you want. You’re welcome home; and there’s a pretty property waiting for you. And it saves a confounded deal of trouble, I can tell you, that you should turn up now.”