What could Mrs. Woodward do but cry also? what but that, and throw such blame as she could upon her own shoulders? She was bound to defend her daughter.
'It has been my fault, Harry,' she said; 'it is I whom you must blame, not poor Gertrude.'
'I blame no one,' said he.
'I know you do not; but it is I whom you should blame. I should have learnt how her heart stood, and have prevented this—but I thought, I thought it would have been otherwise.'
Norman looked up at her, and took her hand, and pressed it. 'I will go now,' he said, 'and don't expect me here to-morrow. I could not come in. Say that I thought it best to go to town because I am unwell. Good-bye, Mrs. Woodward; pray write to me. I can't come to the Cottage now for a while, but pray write to me: do not you forget me, Mrs. Woodward.'
Mrs. Woodward fell upon his breast and wept, and bade God bless him, and called him her son and her dearest friend, and sobbed till her heart was nigh to break. 'What,' she thought, 'what could her daughter wish for, when she repulsed from her feet such a suitor as Harry Norman?'
He then went quietly down the stairs, quietly out of the house, and having packed up his bag at the inn, started off through the pouring rain, and walked away through the dark stormy night, through the dirt and mud and wet, to his London lodgings; nor was he again seen at Surbiton Cottage for some months after this adventure.