“Poor child!” she murmured, “poor child!”
I was afraid that she was going to ask me questions which I could not well have answered, so I rose to my feet and turned away. Yet there was something soothing in her evident sympathy. She walked to the door with me.
“When shall you be ready to go to London with me?” she asked, upon the threshold.
“Any time,” I answered, promptly. “There is nothing I desire so much as to leave here.”
“I will write to have my little place put in order to-day,” she said. “It will be ready for us in a week, I dare say. I think that I too shall be glad to leave here.”
I walked quietly home through the shadowy plantation and across the little stretch of common. On my way upstairs to my room Mary, our little housemaid, interrupted me.
“There is a young lady in the drawing room waiting to see you, miss,” she announced; “she came directly after you went.”
I retraced my steps slowly. Of course I knew who it was. I opened the door, and found her sitting close to the fire.
She rose at once to her feet, and looked at me a little defiantly. I greeted her as pleasantly as I could, but she was evidently in a bad humor. There was an awkward silence for a moment or two. I waited for her to explain her mission.