CHAPTER XXX.
NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY.
Rodney Sherrett had heard of the Argenters' losses by the fire; what would have been the good of his correspondence with Aunt Euphrasia, and how would she have expected to keep him pacified up in Arlesbury, if he could not get, regularly, all she knew? Of course he ferreted out of her, likewise, the rest of the business, as fast as she heard it.
"It's really a dreadful thing to be so confided in, all round!" she said to Desire Ledwith, when they had been talking one morning. "People don't know half the ways in which everything that gets poured into my mind concerns everything else. As an intelligent human being, to say nothing of sympathies, I can't act as if they weren't there. I feel like a kind of Judas with a bag of secrets to keep, and playing the traitor with every one of them!"
"What a nice world it would be if there were only plenty more just such Judases to carry the bags!" Desire answered, buttoning on her Astrachan collar, and picking up her muff to go.
Whereupon five minutes after, the amiable traitress was seated at her writing-desk replying to Rodney's last imperative inquiry, and telling him, under protest, as something he could not possibly help, or have to do with, the further misfortune of Sylvie and her mother.
Mr. Dakie Thayne had honestly expressed his conviction to Miss Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith, that the Donnowhair business was an irresponsible, loose speculation. He said that he had heard of this Farron Saftleigh and his schemes; that he might frighten him into some sort of small restitution, and that he would look into the title of the lands for Mrs. Argenter; but that the value of these fell of course, with the railroad shares; and the railroad was, at present, at any rate, mere moonshine; stopped short, probably, in the woods somewhere, waiting for the country to be settled up beyond Latterend.
"Am I bound by my promise against such a time as this?" Rodney wrote back to Aunt Euphrasia. "Can't I let Sylvie know, at least, that I am working for her, and that if she will say so, I will be her mother's son? I could get a little house here in Arlesbury, for a hundred dollars a year. I am earning fifteen hundred now, and I shall save my this year's thousand. I shall not need any larger putting into business. I don't care for it. I shall work my way up here. I believe I am better off with an income that I can clearly see through, than with one which sits loose enough around my imagination to let me take notions. Can't you stretch your discretionary power? Don't you see my father couldn't but consent?"
The motive had touched Rodney Sherrett's love and manliness, just as this fine manœuvrer,—pulling wires whose ends laid hold of character, not circumstance,—believed and meant. It had only added to the strength and loyalty of his purpose. She had looked deeper than a mere word-faithfulness in communicating to him what another might have deemed it wiser not to let him know. She thought he had a right to the motives that were made for him. But when a month would take this question of his abroad and bring back an answer, Miss Euphrasia would not force beyond the letter any interpretation of provisional authority which her brother-in-law had deputed. She would only draw herself closer to Sylvie in all possible confidence and friendliness. She would only move her to acquiescence yet a little longer in what her friends offered and urged. She represented to her that they must at least wait to hear from Mr. Thayne; there might be something coming from the West; and it would be cruel to hurry her mother into a life which could not but afflict her, until an absolute necessity should be upon them.