Helen received the curate respectfully, but not very cordially: SHE could not make Leopold’s face shine!
“Would your brother like to see Mr. Polwarth?” asked the curate rather abruptly.
“I will see anyone you would like me to see. Mr. Wingfold,” answered Lingard for himself, with a decision that clearly indicated returning strength.
“But, Leopold, you know it is hardly to be desired,” suggested Helen, “that more persons--”
“I don’t know that,” interrupted Leopold with strange expression.
“Perhaps I had better tell you, Miss Lingard,” said the curate, “that it was Mr. Polwarth who found the thing I gave you. After your visit, he could not fail to put things together, and had he been a common man, I should have judged it prudent to tell him for the sake of secrecy what I have told him for the sake of counsel. I repeat in your brother’s hearing what I have said to you, that he is the wisest and best man I have ever known.--I left him in the meadow at the foot of the garden. He is suffering to-day, and I wanted to save him the longer walk. If you will allow me, I will go and bring him in.”
“Do,” said Leopold. “Think, Helen!--If he is the wisest and best man Mr. Wingfold ever knew! Tell him where to find the key.”
“I will go myself,” she said--with a yielding to the inevitable.
When she opened the door, there was the little man seated a few yards off on the grass. He had plucked a cowslip and was looking into it so intently that he neither heard nor saw her.
He lifted his eyes, rose, and taking off his hat, said with a smile,
“I was looking in the cowslip for the spots which the fairy, in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, calls ‘rubies.’--How is your brother, Miss Lingard?”
Helen answered with cold politeness, and led the way up the garden with considerably more stateliness of demeanour than was necessary.
When he followed her into the room, “This is Mr. Polwarth, Leopold,” said the curate, rising respectfully. “You may speak to him as freely as to me, and he is far more able to give you counsel than I am.”
“Would you mind shaking hands with me, Mr. Polwarth?” said Leopold, holding out his shadowy hand.
Polwarth took it with the kindest of smiles, and held it a moment in his.
“You think me an odd-looking creature--don’t you?” he said; “but just because God made me so, I have been compelled to think about things I might otherwise have forgotten, and that is why Mr. Wingfold would have me come to see you.”