“Harriet!” exclaimed her wondering brother, “where does this friend live?”
“Neither do I know that,” she returned. “But he knows us both, and our history—all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at his own suggestion, I have kept the secret of his coming, here, from you, lest his acquaintance with it should distress you.”
“Here! Has he been here, Harriet?”
“Here, in this room. Once.”
“What kind of man?”
“Not young. ‘Grey-headed,’ as he said, ‘and fast growing greyer.’ But generous, and frank, and good, I am sure.”
“And only seen once, Harriet?”
“In this room only once,” said his sister, with the slightest and most transient glow upon her cheek; “but when here, he entreated me to suffer him to see me once a week as he passed by, in token of our being well, and continuing to need nothing at his hands. For I told him, when he proffered us any service he could render—which was the object of his visit—that we needed nothing.”
“And once a week—”
“Once every week since then, and always on the same day, and at the same hour, he his gone past; always on foot; always going in the same direction—towards London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me, and wave his hand cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made that promise when he proposed these curious interviews, and has kept it so faithfully and pleasantly, that if I ever felt any trifling uneasiness about them in the beginning (which I don’t think I did, John; his manner was so plain and true) it very soon vanished, and left me quite glad when the day was coming. Last Monday—the first since this terrible event—he did not go by; and I have wondered whether his absence can have been in any way connected with what has happened.”