"I am sorry to have disturbed you," he said, when she had set down the candle on a table without re-lighting the gas, "but I want to see Routh particularly. Is he in?"
"No," said Harriet, "he is not. Did you get his letter?"
"What letter? I have not heard from him. I have only just come up from Amherst. But you look ill, Mrs. Routh. Does anything ail you? Is anything wrong?"
"No," she said, hurriedly, "nothing, nothing. Routh has been worried, that's all, and I am very tired."
She pushed the candle further away as she spoke, and, placing her elbow on the table, rested her head on her hand. George looked at her with concern. He had a kind heart and great tenderness for women and children, and he could forget, or, at all events, lay aside his own anxieties in a moment at the sight of suffering in a woman's face. His look of anxious sympathy irritated Harriet; she moved uneasily and impatiently, and said almost harshly:
"Never mind my looks, Mr. Dallas; they don't matter. Tell me how you have sped on your errand at Poynings. Has your mother kept her promise? Have you got the money? I hope so, for I am sorry to say Stewart wants it badly, and has been reckoning on it eagerly. I can't imagine how it happened you did not get his letter."
"I have succeeded," said George. "My mother has kept her word, God bless her, and I came at once to tell Routh he can have the money."
He stopped in the full tide of his animated speech, and looked curiously at Harriet. Something in her manner struck him as being unusual. She was evidently anxious about the money, glad to see him, and yet oddly absent. She did not look at him, and while he spoke she had turned her head sharply once or twice, while her upraised eyelids and parted lips gave her face a fleeting expression of intense listening. She instantly noticed his observation of her, and said sharply:
"Well, pray go on; I am longing to hear your story."
"I thought you were listening to something, you looked as if you heard something," said George.