Now--knowing that it was his turn, his hand had stretched out for it naturally the moment Claudina had closed the door, and she had as readily given it. But there was a secret exultation in the heart of her. John had addressed it to her. There was no getting away from that.
For a moment, the old gentleman sat fingering it in dubious hesitation. Then he passed it back again.
"It's your letter, my dear," he said. "You open it." And picking up his book, he pretended to go on reading. Of course he did not see a single word on the page before him. Every sense in his body was strained to catch the sound of the tearing paper as she broke open the envelope. But there was no sound at all. Another moment of silence and she was bending over him from behind his chair, her arms round his neck and the letter held before his eyes.
"We'll open it together," she said.
It was her way of letting him do it without knowing that he had given way. To be sure, it was his finger that finally broke the flap of the envelope; but then, he retained all the dignity of the sacrifice. And so, as she leant over his shoulder, they read it together, with little exclamations of delight, little interruptions of pleasure, that need a heart for their purer translation, and cannot be written here because of that great gulf which is fixed behind the mind and the pen--because of that greater gulf which lies between the word and the eye that reads it.
"My dearest----"
Just those two words beginning; but they were almost the entire letter to her. They set her little brown eyes alight, her heart beating quickly behind the stiff bodice.
"I have left writing to you until the last moment for fear I should be unable to come on the day that you were expecting me. But it is all right. I am starting to-morrow morning, and shall be with you the usual time the day following, just about sunset. I can't tell you how glad I shall be to get away from here. You know what London can be like in July, and I suppose I want a change as well. I can't work these days at all--but I don't mean to worry you. I expect I am depressed and want different air in my lungs. I shall go up to the bows of the steamer crossing to-morrow, stand there with my mouth open, and get it forced down my throat like a dose.
"God bless you, dearest. Give my love to father, but don't tell him I can't work. I know he understands it well enough, but I believe it depresses him as much as it does me."
He looked up simply into her face as he handed back the paper.