“For Midchekoff's villa at Como. We discussed it all last night after you left, and in twenty-four hours we are to be on the road.”
“What is the reason of this hurried departure?”
“The Ricketts invasion gives the pretext; but of course you know better than I do what a share the novelty of the scheme lends to its attractions.”
“And we are to leave this to-morrow?” said Kate, rather to herself than for her companion.
Jekyl marked well the tone and the expression of the speaker, but said not a word.
Kate stood for a few seconds lost in thought. Her difficulties were thickening around her, and not a gleam of light shone through the gloomy future before her. At last, as it were overpowered by the torturing anxieties of her situation, she covered her face with her hands to hide the tears that would gush forth in spite of her.
“Miss Dalton will forgive me,” said Jekyl, speaking in a low and most respectful voice, “if I step for once from the humble path I have tracked for myself in life, and offer my poor services as her adviser.”
Nothing could be more deferential than the speech, or the way in which it was uttered, and yet Kate heard it with a sense of pain. She felt that her personal independence was already in peril, and that the meek and bashful Mr. Jekyl had gained a mastery over her. He saw all this, he read each struggle of her mind, and, were retreat practicable, he would have retreated; but, the step once taken, the only course was “forwards.”
“Miss Dalton may reject my counsels, but she will not despise the devotion in which they are proffered. A mere accident” here he glanced at the paper which she still held in her fingers “a mere accident has shown me that you have a difficulty; one for which neither your habits nor knowledge of life can suggest the solution.” He paused, and a very slight nod from Kate emboldened him to proceed. “Were it not so, Miss Dalton were the case one for which your own exquisite tact could suffice, I never would have ventured on the liberty. I, who have watched you with wondering admiration, directing and guiding your course amid shoals and reefs and quicksands, where the most skilful might have found shipwreck, it would have been hardihood indeed for me to have offered my pilotage. But here, if I err not greatly, here is a new and unknown sea, and here I may be of service to you.”
“Is it so plain, then, what all this means?” said Kate, holding out the bill towards Jekyl.