"Is this a favorite retreat of yours?" he asks, as our hands meet.
"Sometimes. Oh, Mr. Carrington, I am so glad to see you to-day."
"Are you, really? That is better news than I hoped to hear when I left home this morning."
"Because I want to return you your handkerchief. I have had it so long, and am so anxious to get rid of it. It—it would probably look nicer," I say, with hesitation, slowly withdrawing the article in question from my pocket, "if anybody else had washed it; but I did not want any one to find out about—that day: so I had to do it myself."
Lingering, cautiously, I bring it to light and hold it out to him. Oh, how dreadfully pink and uncleanly it appears in the broad light of the open air! To me it seems doubly hideous—the very last thing a fastidious gentleman would dream of putting to his nose.
Mr. Carrington accepts it almost tenderly. There is not the shadow of a smile upon his face. It would be impossible for me to say how grateful I feel to him for this.
"Is it possible you took all that trouble," he says, a certain gentle light, with which I am growing familiar, coming into his eyes as they rest upon my anxious face. "My dear child, why? Did you not understand I was only jesting when I expressed a desire to have it again? Why did you not put it in the fire, or rid yourself of it in some other fashion long ago? So"—after a pause—"you really washed it with your own hands for me?"
"One might guess that by looking at it," I answer, with a rather awkward laugh: "still, I think it would not look quite so badly, but that I kept it in my pocket ever since, and that gives it its crumpled appearance."
"Ever since? so near to you for five long days? What a weight it must have been on your tender conscience! Well, at all events no other washerwoman"—with a smile—"shall ever touch it. I promise you that." He places it carefully in an inside pocket as he speaks.
"Oh, please do not say that!" I cry, dismayed: "you must not keep it as a specimen of my handiwork. Once properly washed, you will forget all about it: but if you keep it before your eyes in its present state—- Mr. Carrington, do put it in your clothes-basket the moment you go home."