"Yet we were friends for years," declared the dissimulator, folding his hands with a dreary shake of his head.
"For years?" repeated Emma, advancing and surveying him earnestly.
"Our father was a much older man than you, Mr.—Mr. Hope."
"Perhaps, perhaps, I never saw him. But we corresponded for years. Have you not come across letters signed by my name, in looking over his effects?"
"No," answered Emma, firmly, while Hermione, looking very pale, retreated towards the door, where she stopped in mingled distress and curiosity.
"Then he must have destroyed them all," declared their visitor. "Some people do not keep letters. Yet they were full of information, I assure you; full, for it was upon the ever delightful subject of chemistry we corresponded, and the letters I wrote him sometimes cost me a week's effort to indite."
Emma, who had never met a man like this before, looked at him with wide-open eyes. Had Hermione not been there, she would have liked to have played with his eccentricities, and asked him numberless questions. But with her sister shrinking in the doorway, she dared not encourage him to pursue a theme which she perceived to be fraught with the keenest suffering for Hermione. So she refrained from showing the distrust which she really felt, and motioning the old man to sit down, asked, quietly:
"And was it for these letters you came? If so, I am sorry that none such have been found."
"No, no," cried Huckins, with stammering eagerness, as he marked the elder sister's suspicious eyes and unencouraging manner. "It was not to get them back that I ventured to call upon you, but for the pleasure of seeing the house where he lived and did so much wonderful work, and the laboratory, if you will be so good. Why has your sister departed?" he suddenly inquired, in fretful surprise, pointing to the door where Hermione had stood a moment before.
"She probably has duties," observed Emma, in a troubled voice. "And she probably was surprised to hear a stranger ask to see a room no one but the members of his family have entered since our father's death."