'Yes, over Sunday.'
'That is well. I thought so,'
'Why?'
'Because you never dare to give way but when he is at hand. Dear Clem, I did not mean to vex you. Where should we have been if you had not been brave and strong?'
'I can't say much for that now, Cherry,' he said, 'I must not stay. I shall not be fit for what has still to be done.'
She heard him walk across to that untenanted room, and her love for him was quickened. Trust in his highly principled kindness she had always had, but to find him crushed, oppressed, overwhelmed, gave her a fellow-feeling for him as she felt him leaning on her; and this was not indeed consolation, but something not entirely removed from it.
His resolute, evenly-balanced manner, guarding jealously against whatever could unnerve him, had however been kept up all along to all the rest, as perhaps was needed by the exigencies of his situation, and perhaps it helped to actuate Robina in the conversation she was holding as she paced the cloister with William.
'Should you very much mind my not earning that last two hundred?'
'I? You speak as if I had ever asked you to earn anything.'
'For don't you think it seems my duty to stay and look after poor Cherry? If Stella were left I should not mind, but no one can tell whether Angel may not be worse than nobody; or she might yet go to St. Faith's.'