One short year after, what would not Philip have given for that quarter of an hour!
By six o'clock he was at St. Mildred's, greeted with delight by his sister, and with cordiality by Dr. Henley. They were both proud of him, and every tender feeling his sister had was for Philip, her pet, and her pupil in his childhood, and her most valued companion and counsellor through her early womanhood.
She had a picked dinner-party to meet him, for she knew the doctor's conversation was not exactly the thing to entertain him through a whole evening, and the guests might well think they had never seen a handsomer or more clever brother and sister than Mrs. Henley and Captain Morville. The old county families, if they did wonder at her marriage, were always glad to meet her brother, and it was a great pleasure to him to see old friends.
Only once did his sister, in the course of the evening, make him feel the difference of their sentiments, and that was about Miss Wellwood. Philip defended her warmly; and when he heard that there was a plan getting up for excluding her from the hospital, he expressed strong disapprobation at the time; and after the guests were gone, spoke upon the subject with his sister and her husband. The doctor entered into no party questions, and had only been stirred up to the opposition by his wife; he owned that the Miss Wellwoods had done a great deal of good, and made the nurses do their duty better than he had ever known, and was quite ready to withdraw his opposition. Mrs. Henley argued about opinions, but Philip was a match for her in her own line; and the end of it was, that though she would not allow herself to be convinced, and shook her head at her brother's way of thinking, he knew he had prevailed, and that Miss Wellwood would be unmolested.
There was not another person in the world to whom Margaret would have yielded; and it served to restore him to the sense of universal dominion which had been a little shaken by his conversation with Guy.
'Sir Guy was a great deal with the Wellwoods,' said Mrs. Henley.
'Was he, indeed?'
'O, you need not think of that. It would be too absurd. The youngest must be twice his age.'
'I was not thinking of any such thing,' said Philip, smiling, as he thought of the very different course Guy's affections had taken.
'I did hear he was to marry Lady Eveleen de Courcy. Is there anything in that report?'