‘You are sure it is not too far for you?’ asked the curate.
‘Quite. You know I always used to fly upon Wrapworth turf.’ After some silence—‘I know what you have been doing,’ she said, with a choking voice.
‘About the picture? I am sorry you do.’
‘It is of no use for you to know that your cousin has no more heart than a lettuce run to seed.’
‘When I knew that before, why may I not know that there are others not in the same case?’ she said, with full heart and eyes.
‘Because the sale must take place, and the purchaser may be a brute, so it may end in disappointment.’
‘It can’t end in disappointment.’
‘It may be far beyond my means,’ continued the curate, as if he had been answering her importunities for a new doll.
‘That I know it is,’ she said. ‘If it can be done at all, the doing of it may be left to Miss Charlecote—it is an expiation I owe to her generous spirit.’
‘You would rather she did it than I?’ he asked, mortified.