But he was less reticent with Mildred, and to her he avowed that his pain was very great.
'I can bear to live without her; at least I could be patient for years, but I cannot bear leaving her to her father's sorry protection. If my love could only shield her in her trouble, I think I could be content,' and Mildred understood him.
'We will all be so good to her for your sake,' she returned, with a nice womanly tact, not wearying him with effusion of sympathy, but giving him just the comforting assurance he needed. Richard's fortitude and calmness had deceived his father, but Mildred knew something of the silence of exceeding pain.
'Thank you,' he said in a low voice; and Mildred knew she had said the right thing.
But as he was bidding them good-bye two days afterwards, he beckoned her apart from the others.
'Aunt Milly, I trust her to you,' he said, hurriedly; 'remember all my comfort lies in your goodness to her.'
'Yes, Richard, I know; as far as I can, I will be her friend. You shall hear everything from me,' and so she sent him away half-comforted.
Half--comforted, though his heart ached with its mighty burden of love; and though he would have given half his strong young years to hear her say, 'I love you, Richard.' Could older men love better, nay, half as well as he did, with such self-sacrificing purity and faith?
Yes, his pain was great, for delay and uncertainty are bitter to the young, and they would fain cleave with impatient hand the veiled mystery of life; but nevertheless his heart was strong within him, for though he could not speak of his hope, for fear that others might call it visionary, yet it stirred to the very foundation of his soul; for so surely as he suffered now, he knew that one day he should call Ethel Trelawny his wife.
When Richard was gone, and the household unobservant and occupied in its own business, Mildred quietly fetched her shady hat, and went through the field paths, bordered by tall grasses and great shining ox-eyed daises, which led to the shrubberies of Kirkleatham.
The great house was blazing in the sunshine; Ethel's doves were cooing from the tower; through the trees Mildred could see the glimmer of a white gown; the basket-work chair was in its old place, under her favourite acacia tree; the hills looked blue and misty in the distance.