Pamela, shaking her head, and exclaiming: “No, sir. Nay, Mr. Bellairs, I cannot listen, ’tis impossible! ’Tis wrong! ’Tis folly!” nevertheless allowed herself to be drawn into the cool green tree-shadowed spot, and actually sat down on the suggested seat.
He did not as much as offer her his hand; yet his urgency drove her almost with a physical force.
“Oh, Pamela,” he cried, letting himself fall beside her, and clasping his hands and wringing them, “can you conceive what I felt when I heard that ’twas you—you!—oh, my generous girl—who paid my debt? And to think how the first use I made of my liberty was to offend you so grossly.”
Pamela swallowed a sob.
“’Tis over and done with now, Mr. Bellairs. Let me forget.”
She tried to rise, but he caught a fold of her dress.
“One moment more, if you have a woman’s heart. Nay, you see how anxious I am not to presume. I will go on my knees if you like. Oh, Pamela, when I went to pay back my Lord his ninety-seven pound ten, out of that pocketful of money you know of, and he stared at me, and: ‘Why, man,’ says he, ‘I never thought to see you this morning! Her Ladyship was in one of her bad ways, and sure, if it was I had been in the sponging house, she’d not have out with a farthing! I’ve been but waiting for a better moment,’ says he. ‘Then who, in the name o’ God?’ cries I, cutting him short. Pamela, I lost no time in making my congé to my Lord, and I ran all the way to that fellow Jobbins—I promise you! ‘For I’ll get to the bottom of this,’ I cried. ‘And ’twas a lady veiled,’ quoth he, and stuck to it, and the fool that I am, must needs think my cousin Kitty was playing a sort of game with me; ashamed not to pay for me, but, the stingy thing! mortal afraid lest I should ask her again! And I went back again to Hertford Street to make a further exhibition of myself.”
Here Pamela could not keep from laughter.
“You laugh! ’Tis all I deserve. Indeed, ’twas a monstrous absurd scene. But my Lady pretty soon convinced me that the magnanimity I ascribed to her was unknown to that bit of strass she calls her heart. By the Lord, I think I was mad that morning altogether! I hardly know how I got out of Hertford Street once more, and all the way down to Jobbins, for the thought had dawned! I’ve not so many friends, you see, Pamela! ‘A tall, fine figure of a lady,’ says he, ‘stepping as clean as your own sorrel filly, Mr. Jocelyn. And I caught,’ says he, ‘a gleam of hair under the veil—now, if you’ll run your eye down the row in there,’ says he, jerking his thumb towards his stables, ‘you’ll see, third from the door, a bit of a gloss on a hack’s back that’s just the same colour.’ And so I knew,” added Jocelyn, with a sudden drop from his tone of mimicry, into accents of real emotion.
Pamela set her teeth upon her trembling lip. She made a desperate effort after her usual fine air of independence.