“They make a handsome couple,” he observed.  “I remember well when her mother, in her youth an ideally beautiful woman, of an excellent family, married Daniel Pemberton, who was not of so good a family, but had made money.  The major, who was only a very young man then, disapproved of the match; he considered that his mother, although a widow and nearly forty, was marrying beneath her.  But he has been a good brother to Clara, and a careful guardian of her estate.  Ah, young gentleman, you cannot appreciate, except in imagination, what it means, to one standing on the brink of eternity, to feel sure that he will live on in his children and his children’s children!”

Ellis was appreciating at that moment what it meant, in cold blood, with no effort of the imagination, to see the girl whom he loved absorbed completely in another man.  She had looked at him only once since Tom Delamere had entered the room, and then merely to use him as a spur with which to prick his favored rival.

“Yes, sir,” he returned mechanically, “Miss Clara is a beautiful young lady.”

“And Tom is a good boy—­a fine boy,” returned the old gentleman.  “I am very well pleased with Tom, and shall be entirely happy when I see them married.”

Ellis could not echo this sentiment.  The very thought of this marriage made him miserable.  He had always understood that the engagement was merely tentative, a sort of family understanding, subject to confirmation after Delamere should have attained his majority, which was still a year off, and when the major should think Clara old enough to marry.  Ellis saw Delamere with the eye of a jealous rival, and judged him mercilessly,—­whether correctly or not the sequel will show.  He did not at all believe that Tom Delamere would make a fit husband for Clara Pemberton; but his opinion would have had no weight,—­he could hardly have expressed it without showing his own interest.  Moreover, there was no element of the sneak in Lee Ellis’s make-up.  The very fact that he might profit by the other’s discomfiture left Delamere secure, so far as he could be affected by anything that Ellis might say.  But Ellis did not shrink from a fair fight, and though in this one the odds were heavily against him, yet so long as this engagement remained indefinite, so long, indeed, as the object of his love was still unwed, he would not cease to hope.  Such a sacrifice as this marriage clearly belonged in the catalogue of impossibilities.  Ellis had not lived long enough to learn that impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen.

Sandy returned at the end of a quarter of an hour, and dinner was announced.  Mr. Delamere led the way to the dining-room with Mrs. Ochiltree.  Tom followed with Clara.  The major went to the head of the stairs and came down with Mrs. Carteret upon his arm, her beauty rendered more delicate by the pallor of her countenance and more complete by the happiness with which it glowed.  Ellis went in alone.  In the rector’s absence it was practically a family party which sat down, with the exception of Ellis, who, as we have seen, would willingly have placed himself in the same category.