Her fingers clutched at the neck of her dress, as if to tear it open, and so relieve the swelling of her throat.
"Does he think that he can make it up to me with money? Oh, I'll take nothing from him any more. Let him go if he will, and his money too—I shall die and be forgotten—I won't live to bear the shame of it—the pain—the——"
She did not finish her sentence. Her slight form was swaying to and fro, like a reed shaken by the wind; her face had grown whiter and whiter as she went on: finally she flung up her arms and fell senseless to the floor. The end of all her hopes and fears—of all her joys and longing and desire, was worse to her than death.
Johnson lifted her to the sofa, with a sort of awkward tenderness, which perhaps he would not have liked to acknowledge to his master; and then, before summoning Mrs. Capper, he thrust into Milly's pocket the envelope containing the banknotes and the address which he had brought with him. He knew that his master was "doing the thing handsomely," as far as money was concerned, and he had no doubt but that the forsaken woman would see, when she had got over her first mad frenzy of despair, that she had better accept and use his gifts. So he stowed the envelope away in her pocket, so that it might not attract the curious eyes of prying servant or landlady.
Then he called to Mrs. Capper, and gave her a brief explanation of Milly's swoon. "The lady's a little overcome," he said. "Mr. Beadon has got to go abroad, and couldn't find time to see her before he went."
"Hard-heated brute!" said the landlady, as she chafed Milly's hands, and held a smelling-bottle to her nose.
"Oh, dear, no!" said Mr. Johnson, briskly. "Family ties must not stand in the way of business. I wish you good-day, and hope the lady will soon be better."
And he left the house rather hurriedly, for he had no desire to encounter the despairing appeal of Milly's eyes when she recovered from her swoon.
"It is a little too bad to make me his messenger," he said to himself. "He may do his dirty work himself another time. I thought she was quite a different sort of person. Poor thing! I wonder how he feels about her, or whether he feels anything at all."
He had an opportunity of putting his master's equanimity to the test when he made his report of the interview—a report which was made that very afternoon, in spite of his representations that Mr. Beadon had already gone abroad.