"But I am not a stranger," artfully pursued the cringing Huckins, making himself look as benevolent as he could. "I am an admirer, a devoted admirer of your remarkable parent, and I could show you papers"—but he never did,—"of writing in that same parent's hand, in which he describes the long, narrow room, with its shelves full of retorts and crucibles, and the table where he used to work, with the mystic signs above it, which some said were characters taken from cabalistic books, but which he informed me were the new signs he wished to introduce into chemistry, as being more comprehensive and less liable to misinterpretation than those now in use."
"You do seem to know something about the room," she murmured softly, too innocent to realize that the knowledge he showed was such as he could have gleaned from any of Mr. Cavanagh's intimate friends.
"But I want to see it with my own eyes. I want to stand in the spot where he stood, and drink in the inspiration of his surroundings, before I go back to my own great labor."
"Have you a laboratory? Are you a chemist?" asked Emma, interested in despite of the dislike his wheedling ways and hypocritical air naturally induced.
"Yes, yes, I have a laboratory," said he; "but there is no romance about mine; it is just the plain working-room of a hard-working man, while his——"
Emma, who had paled at these words almost as much as her sister had done at his first speech about her father, recoiled with a look in which the wonderment was strangely like fear.
"I cannot show you the room," said she. "You exaggerate your desire to see it, as you exaggerate the attainments and the discoveries of my father. I must ask you to excuse me," she continued, with a slight acknowledgment in which dismissal could be plainly read. "I am very busy, and the morning is rapidly flying. If you could come again——"
But here Hermione's full deep tones broke from the open doorway.
"If he wishes to see the place where father worked, let him come; there is no reason why we should hide it from one who professes such sympathy with our father's pursuits."
Huckins, chuckling, looked at Emma, and then at her sister, and moved rapidly towards the door. Emma, who had been taken greatly by surprise by her sister's words, followed slowly, showing more and more astonishment as Hermione spoke of this place, or that, on their way up-stairs, as being the spot where her father's books were kept, or his chemicals stored, till they came to the little twisted staircase at the top, when she became suddenly silent.