‘“One thing I must ask you to bear in mind—that I do not wish to meet any of the family except yourself. A meeting would not be agreeable to me, and it could not be pleasing to them. It was about you my sister wrote to me, and my pledge to her concerned you alone.”’
This was subscribed with the most formal of all subscribing phrases—‘Yours truly;’ and even that he seemed to consider of so little importance, that it was only suggested by a series of strokes, which would have been absolutely meaningless to any one not acquainted with the form. Yet those two words ought to mean a great deal.
After the message had been read twice, Madge sat thoughtfully gazing at the paper. Philip’s cheeks had flushed, and his eyes became bright with satisfaction.
‘Well!’ he exclaimed at length, ‘this disposes of the whole bother. I can do what my mother wished without having to run away from you. Are you not glad?’
‘Yes, I am glad,’ she answered slowly; ‘but, do you know, I am almost afraid of your uncle.’
‘Nonsense. He is an odd fish, and dry as a roasted coffee-bean in his letters. But he must be the right sort at bottom, or _she_ would never have cared so much for him, or have asked him to take an interest in me.’
Philip was thinking of his mother; Madge was thinking of hers; and she also came to the conclusion that Austin Shield must be a good man at heart, or he could not have won so much affection, and he would not have been so faithful to the pledge he had given his sister years ago. The vision of the hard unforgiving man vanished from her mind, but no new conception took its place. Some instinct impels us to create a mental portrait of any person about whom we hear much or with whom we correspond. As a rule, the portrait is entirely erroneous; and we are disappointed, agreeably or the reverse, as may be, when we meet the original in the flesh. Yet these portraits of the imagination often exercise a permanent influence on our conduct towards the unconscious sitters.
‘Have you ever formed any notion of what he can be like personally?’ she asked by-and-by.
‘Well, no.... I cannot say that I have—that is, any particular notion of him. There is no portrait of him anywhere about the house, and my father never spoke about him till that evening when he tried to persuade me not to go to him. I should say he is a big chap, with a thin face and a keen eye to business, but good-natured in the main. What is your idea?’