A TALK WITH THE MAJOR.
While she meditated thus, major Marvel made his appearance. He had been
watching outside, saw her uncle go, and an hour after was shown to the
room where she still sat, staring out on the frosty trees of the square.
"Why, my child," he said, with almost paternal tenderness, "your hand is
as cold as ice! Why do you sit so far from the fire?"
She rose and went to the fire with him. He put her in an easy chair, and
sat down beside her. Common, pudgy, red-faced, bald-headed as he was,
she come to him, and that out of regions of deepest thought, with a
sense of refuge. He could scarcely have understood one of her
difficulties, would doubtless have judged not a few of her scruples
nonsensical and over-driven; yet knowing this it was a comfort to her to
come from those regions back to a mere, honest, human heart--to feel a
human soul in a human body nigh her. For the mere human is divine,
though not _the_ divine, and to the mere human essential comfort.
Should relations be broken between her and lord Gartley, she knew it
would delight the major; yet she was able to look upon him as a friend
in whom she could trust.
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