She hoped that he would tell her what was wrong. To her disappointment, he smiled, and answered lightly.
"I'm all right, Nan. I have a good deal to do just now, and am rather tired—that is all."
"Tired—and anxious?" she said, looking at him with more keenness than he had thought her soft eyes capable of expressing.
"Anxious! no, I have not much to be anxious about, have I?"
He spoke with a laugh; but, to her fancy, there was something half-alarmed and half-defiant in the pose of his lifted head, the glance of his handsome bright eyes. Her heart sank a little: it seemed to her that it would have been nobler in her husband to tell her the whole truth, and it had never occurred to her before to think of him as ignoble in any way.
"I suppose you do not want to tell me for fear of troubling me," she said, with a tremor in her voice; "but I think I know what you are anxious about, Sydney."
He gave a little start as he turned towards her.
"Some man has been here whilst you were out, and he sent up this letter with a request that it should be opened. Look!" she said, giving him the bill, "you can tear it up now. I was sure you had gone out to see about it, but I thought it better that I should settle it at once. I hope"—with a little girlish nervousness—"you don't mind?"
He had sat down on a chair when she showed him Mr. Copley's letter, with the look of a man determined to bear a blow, but he sprang up again at the sight of his dishonored acceptance.
"And you have paid it, Nan?" he cried.