Yes, this was just the place where father had stood when he had suddenly changed the conversation about the bump-suppers, and all the joys of Oxford, to that strange and sober talk about the vicissitudes of life, and what a difference a day might make in the position of a happy lad at college, thinking of nothing but fun and frolic. Fred remembered every word, every look--the wail of the autumnal wind, the clear break of sky among the clouds towards the west, the half shock, half amusement, with which he had felt that sudden change into what in those days of levity he had called the didactic in his father’s tone. It had seemed to him a sermon at the time; and then it had seemed to him--he knew not what--an awful advertisement of what was coming: a prophecy conscious or unconscious. He walked up and down, up and down under the trees, hearing the same sounds, the tinkle of the half-choked fountain, the rustling of the wind among the branches. The sentiment of the night was different, for that had been in September, and this was full of the soft and hopeful stir of May. The leaves were falling then; now they were but just opened, hanging in clusters of vivid young green, which almost forced colour upon the paleness of the wistful night. But nothing else was as it had been then. His father was gone, swept from the earth as though he had never been. Yet this great change had not brought the other changes which Mr. Dalyell anticipated. Fred had not been forced into the premature development of a young head of the family. He had not been plunged into care and trouble, into work and anxiety. If anything, he had been more free than before. He was still only a youth dallying upon the edge of life, not a man entering into serious duties. The contrast struck him strangely. This was not what his father had foreseen. It gave him a vague new trouble in his mind to perceive that this was so. He ought to be less free, perhaps more occupied, more responsible. He could not all at once decide what the difference was.
Here he was suddenly disturbed by the sound of a step upon the gravel--and it is to be feared that Fred uttered within himself an impatient exclamation, as he threw away the end of his cigar. “Here is one of those bothering girls,” he said to himself, though we know with what high reason and feeling Susie and Alice had withdrawn, even from the window, not to seem to spy upon their brother. He got up to meet them, remembering that he had just come home and that it would be brutal to show any impatience of their affection. But Fred might have known that the heavy, slow step which approached him was not that of either of the girls. A tall figure shaped itself out of the darkness--the white mutch, the bow of black ribbon, the checked shawl, became dimly visible.