Very few sons like to bring other people into their fathers’ houses, specially in the old age of the latter; but John Mortimer was not only confident of his own supreme influence, but he was more than commonly attached to his father, and had long been made to feel that on his own insight and forethought depended almost all that gave the old man pleasure.

His father seldom disturbed any existing arrangements, though he often found comfort from their being altered for him; so John decided to propose to him to have his brother’s son to live with him.  In a few days, therefore, he wrote to Valentine that he had made up his mind, and would speak to his father for him, which he did, and saw that the nephew’s wish gave decided pleasure; but when he made his other proposal he was quite surprised (well as he knew his father) at the gladness it excited, at those thanks to himself for having thought of such a thing, and at certain little half-expressed hints which seemed intended to meet and answer any future thoughts his son might entertain as to Valentine’s obtaining more influence than he would approve.  But John was seldom surprised by an after-thought; he was almost always happy enough to have done his thinking beforehand.

He was in the act of writing a letter to Valentine the next morning at his own house, and was there laying the whole plan before him, when he saw him driving rapidly up to the door in the little pony chaise, now the only carriage kept at Brandon’s house.  He sprang out as if in urgent haste, and burst into the room in a great hurry.

“John,” he exclaimed, “can you lend me your phaeton, or give me a mount as far as the junction?  Fred Walker has had one of his attacks, and Emily is in a terrible fright.  She wants another opinion:  she wishes Dr. Limpsey to be fetched, and she wants Grand to come to her.”

This last desire, mentioned as the two hurried together to the stable, showed John that Emily apprehended danger.

Emily’s joyous and impassioned nature, though she lived safely, as it were, in the middle of her own sweet world—­saw the best of it, made the best of it, and coloured it all, earth and sky, with her tender hopefulness—­was often conscious of something yet to come, ready and expectant of the rest of it.  The rest of life, she meant; the rest of sorrow, love, and feeling.

She had a soul full of unused treasures of emotion, and pure, clear depths of passion that as yet slumbered unstirred.  If her heart was a lute, its highest and lowest chords had never been sounded hitherto.  This also she was aware of, and she knew what their music would be like when it came.

She had been in her girlhood the chief idol of many hearts; but joyous, straightforward, and full of childlike sweetness, she had looked on all her adorers in such an impartially careless fashion, that not one of them could complain.  Then, having confided to John Mortimer’s wife that she could get up no enthusiasm for any of them, and thought there could be none of that commodity in her nature, she had at last consented, on great persuasion, to take the man who had loved her all her life, “because he wouldn’t go away, and she didn’t know what else to do with him; he was such a devoted little fellow, too, and she liked him so much better than either of his brothers!”