CHAPTER LVI.

REDIVIVUS.

Ellen Bennet, like May Newt, was a child no longer—­hardly yet a woman, or only a very young one.  Rosy cheeks, and clustering hair, and blue eyes, showed only that it was May—­June almost, perhaps—­instead of gusty March or gleaming April.

“Ellen,” said Gabriel, in a low voice—­while his mother, who was busily sewing, conversed in a murmuring undertone with her husband, who sat upon the sofa, slowly swinging his slippered foot—­“Ellen, Lawrence Newt didn’t say that he should ask Edward to his dinner on my birthday.”

Ellen’s cheeks answered—­not her lips, nor her eyes, which were bent upon a purse she was netting.

“But I think he will,” added Gabriel.  “I think I have mistaken Lawrence Newt if he does not.”

“He is usually very thoughtful,” whispered Ellen, as she netted busily.

“Ellen, how handsome Edward is!” said Gabriel, with enthusiasm.

The young woman said nothing.

“And how good!” added Gabriel.

“He is,” she answered, scarcely audibly.  Then she said she had left something up stairs.  How many things are discovered by young women, under certain circumstances, to have been left up stairs!  Ellen rose and left the room.

“I was saying to your father, Gabriel,” said his mother, raising her voice, and still sewing, “that Edward comes here a great deal.”

“Yes, mother; and I am glad of it.  He has very few friends in the city.”

“He looks like a Spaniard,” said Mr. Bennet, slowly, dwelling upon every word.  “How rich that lustrous tropical complexion is!  Its duskiness is mysterious.  The young man’s eyes are like summer moonlight.”

Mr. Bennet’s own eyes half closed as he spoke, as if he were dreaming of gorgeous summer nights and the murmur of distant music.

Gabriel and his mother were instinctively silent.  The click of her needle was the only sound.

“Oh yes, yes—­that is—­I mean, my dear, he does come here very often.  I do go off on such foolish fancies!” remarked Mr. Bennet, at length.

“He comes very often when you are not at home, Gabriel,” said Mrs. Bennet, after a kind glance at her husband, and still sewing.

“Yes, mother.”

“Then it isn’t only to see you?”

“No, mother.”

“And often when your father and I return from an evening stroll in the streets we find him here.”

“Yes, mother.”

“It isn’t to see us altogether, then?”

“No, mother.”

Mrs. Bennet turned her work, and in so doing glanced for a moment at her son.  His eyes were upon her face, but he seemed to have said all he had to say.

“I always feel,” said Mr. Bennet, in a tone and with an expression as if he were looking at something very far away, “as if King Arthur must have lived in the tropics.  There is that sort of weird, warm atmosphere in the romance.  Where is Ellen?  Shall we read some more in this little edition of the old story?”