It cost something on both our parts; but after that day's discussion we tacitly covered over the pain, and referred to it no more.
I came back into the garden, and told John Halifax all.

He listened with his hand on my shoulder, and his grave, sweet look--dearer sympathy than any words! Though he added thereto a few, in his own wise way; then he and I, also, drew the curtain over an inevitable grief, and laid it in the peaceful chamber of silence.
When my father, Dr.Jessop, John Halifax, and I, met at dinner, the subject had passed into seeming oblivion, and was never afterwards revived.
But dinner being over, and the chatty little doctor gone, while Abel Fletcher sat mutely smoking his pipe, and we two at the window maintained that respectful and decorous silence which in my young days was rigidly exacted by elders and superiors, I noticed my father's eyes frequently resting, with keen observance, upon John Halifax.

Could it be that there had recurred to him a hint of mine, given faintly that morning, as faintly as if it had only just entered my mind, instead of having for months continually dwelt there, until a fitting moment should arrive ?--Could it be that this hint, which he had indignantly scouted at the time, was germinating in his acute brain, and might bear fruit in future days?
I hoped so--I earnestly prayed so.

And to that end I took no notice, but let it silently grow.
The June evening came and went.

The service-bell rang out and ceased.
First, deep shadows, and then a bright star, appeared over the Abbey-tower.