"Thank God, they do not! But what you say about Rem is only cobweb stuff. She is too friendly, too pleasantly familiar, I would like to see her more shy and silent with him. Every one has already given my daughter to Hyde, and, say what you will, common fame is seldom to blame."
"Dinner is waiting, John, and whether you eat it or not Destiny will go straight to her mark. Love is destiny; and the heart is its own fate. There are those to whom we are spiritually related, and the tie is kinder than flesh and blood. Can you, or I, count such kindred? No; but souls see each other at a glance. Did I not know thee, John, the very moment that we met?"
She spoke softly, with a voice sweeter than music, and her husband was touched and calmed. He took the hand she stretched out to him and kissed it, and she added-"Let us be patient. Love has reasons that reason does not understand; and if Cornelia is Hyde's by predestination, as well as by choice, vainly we shall worry and fret; all our opposition will come to nothing. Give Cornelia this interval, and tithe it not; in a few days Arenta will have gone away; and as for Hyde, any hour may summon him to join his father in England; and this summons, as it will include his mother, he can neither evade nor put off. Then Rem will have his opportunity."
"To be patient--to wait--to say nothing--it is to give opportunity too much scope. I must tell that young fellow a little of my mind--"
"You must not make yourself a town's talk, John. Just now New York is all for lovers. If you interfere between Hyde and Cornelia while it is in this temper, every one will cry out, 'Oh, the pity of it!' and you will be bayed into doing some mad thing or other. Do I not know you, dear one?"
"God's precious!" and he took her in his arms, saying, "the man who learns nothing from his wife will never learn anything from anybody. Come, then, and we will eat our meal. I had forgotten Rem, and as you say, Hyde may have to go to England to-morrow; putting-off has broken up many an ill marriage."
"Time and absence against any love affair that is not destiny! And if it be destiny, there is only submission, nothing else. But life has a 'maybe' in everything dear; a maybe that is just as likely to please us as not."
Then Doctor John looked up with a smile. "You are right, Ava," he said cheerfully. "I will take the maybe. Maybes have a deal to do with life. When you come to think of it, there is not a victory of any kind gained, nor a good deed done except on a maybe. So maybe all I fear may pass like a summer cloud. Yet, take my word for it, there is, I think, no maybe in Rem's chances with Cornelia."