“Could you get this small letter to him to-night?” she timidly asked.
“Yes, through the grate; glad to do it, glad of it, twice over,” replied Bart, reaching out, and grasping the proffered billet.
“Why, why do you say that?” asked Sabrey, with an air of mingled doubt and curiosity.
“Cause, in the first place, you'll now keep my secret of being here; and nextly, glad to find there's one among the court folks that feels decent about this bloody business. But I must be off. Yes, I'll get it to him,” said Bart, beginning to descend.
“Say, Barty. Is there any hope that Mr. Woodburn will survive his wounds?”
“Survive? Live, do you mean? O, yes; though the lunge which that—But no matter. It was well meant for the heart, and the fellow wan't at all to blame that it didn't reach it, instead of the inner part of the arm.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Miss Haviland, in a tone of joyful surprise; which the next instant, however, gave way to one of embarrassment. “Why, I heard—have written, indeed, under the belief that—and perhaps——Barty, I think, on the whole, I will not send that billet now.”
As Bart heard these last words of the fair speaker, so inconsistent with all which both her words and manner had just expressed, he looked up with a stare of surprise to her face, now sufficiently revealed, by the glancing light standing near her in the room, to betray its varying expressions. But, as he ran his keen gray eyes over her hesitating and slightly confused countenance, he soon seemed to read the secret cause of her sudden change of purpose, arising from that curious and beautiful trait in woman's heart, which, by some gush of awakened sympathy, often unfolds all the lurking secrets of the breast, but which, when the cause of that sympathy is removed, closes up the avenue, and conceals them from view, in the cold reserve of shrinking delicacy—the colder and more impenetrable in proportion as the disclosure has been complete.
“O, yes, I will carry it,” said Bart, pretending to misunderstand the other, while he pocketed the billet and began to glide down the ladder.
“No,” commenced Miss Haviland; “no, Bart, I said——”