"You are very good to me, sir," said Will. "I don't know how to thank you."
"By going on as you have begun, William. I am very pleased to find you such a congenial companion. I mean to be good to you, better than you can imagine. I am a lonely old man, and you must come and brighten up my home for me."
"Well, well, no promises, my dear boy. I shall see how you go on. I believe we shall get on very well together. Good-bye, I shall see you tomorrow."
"You evidently take a great interest in your nephew," said Mrs. Trevor, on the Dr.'s return to the house, "and I am not surprised. He seems a very nice fellow, so natural and unaffected, and so like you in appearance; he might be a son of yours."
"Yes," said Dr. Owen thoughtfully, "I am greatly pleased with him. You see I am a lonely man. I have no one else to care for, so I shall watch the young man's career with great interest. He will be everything to me, and with God's help I will do everything for him."
"He is a lucky fellow indeed," said Mrs. Trevor.
Gwenda was sitting quietly at work in the bay window, where not a word of this conversation was lost upon her. Was it possible that bright hopes were dawning even for her, who had been tossed about from early girlhood upon the sea of matrimonial schemes? Schemes from which her honest nature had revolted; for Gwenda Vaughan had within her a fund of right feeling and common sense, a warmth of heart which none of the frivolous, shallow-minded men with whom she had come in contact had ever moved. Attracted only by her beauty, they sought for nothing else, while she, conscious of a depth of tenderness waiting for the hand which should unseal its fountain, turned with unsatisfied yearnings from all her admirers and so-called "lovers." She had felt differently towards Will from the day when he had, as she thought, saved her life, and when he had ridden home with her foot in his hand. A strange feeling of attraction had inclined her towards him, all the romance in her nature, which had been stunted and checked by the manoeuvres and manners of country "society," turned towards this stalwart "son of the soil" who had so unexpectedly crossed her path. She had not thought it possible that her romantic dreams could be realised; such things were not for her! In her case everything was to be sacrificed to the duty of "making a good match," of settling herself advantageously in the world, but now what did she hear? "I will do everything for him," surely that meant "I will make him my heir!" For wealth and position for their own sakes she cared not a straw, but Will's "prospects," the sickening word that had been dinned into her ears for years, began to arouse a deep interest in her mind. Her heart told her that he was not entirely indifferent to her, and experience had taught her that when she laid herself out to please she never failed to do so. All day she was very silent until at last Mrs. Trevor said: