"It will be so happy! I can't believe that it's true . . . And I'll work . . . I can work, you know . . . I'll teach, or copy, or do anything . . . And I'll eat as little as ever I can . . . I won't be a burden on you."
"You keep quiet, and don't talk nonsense! I've had a rise lately." Felix gulped down a sudden recollection of his beloved savings. "If you don't eat, I'll make you. So you just be a sensible girl, and stop fretting. You have done with those people, once and for all."
"Not uncle Maurice!"
"If he counts you a thief—!"
"He wouldn't, if—I think she talks and persuades him! And till it was actually found in my box, he always trusted me—though I had been alone in the room with the note, when it was left out."
"So had I!"
"Ah! That was the very thing. I knew you had, and I couldn't bear them to remember that, and so I did not dare at first to speak. Uncle almost begged me to deny taking the note, and I would not. I was so afraid of making them suspect you . . . Felix, I must tell you the truth. I didn't feel quite sure of you, and that made me wretched. And now I see how horrid it was of me to doubt. Will you forgive me?"
"I should think you might have felt sure," Felix said, in a constrained voice. "I'm not that sort of fellow."
"O I know, and I do hate myself for it!"
"Now, look here! I won't have any more crying. You'll wash the house away next. It's been a mess, and you've been an arrant little goose: and that is the long and short of it . . . I suppose, if we hadn't been so many years apart, things would have seemed different . . . Anyhow, it won't happen again . . . You just have to banish the Bryants out of your mind, and make yourself happy here."