"The thing he feared has happened," she thought, while her small white fingers were busy with the jewels. "The very thing he feared. This man must be got away--how am I to do it?"
The solitary candle was burning dimly; the room was dull, cold, and gloomy. George looked round, and was apparently thinking of taking his leave, when Harriet said:
"I have not told you how opportune your getting this money--for I count it as money--is. Stay; let me light the gas. Sit down there opposite to me, and you shall hear how things have gone with us since you went away." She had thrown off the abstraction of her manner, and in a moment she lighted the gas, put the extinguished candle out of sight, set wine upon the table, and pulled a comfortable arm-chair forward, in which she begged George to seat himself. "Take off your coat," she said; and he obeyed her, telling her, with a laugh, as he flung it upon a chair, that there was a small parcel of soiled linen in the pocket.
"I did not expect to have to stay at Amherst, so I took no clothes with me," he explained, "and had to buy a shirt and a pair of stockings for Sunday, so as not to scandalize the natives. Rather an odd place to replenish one's wardrobe, by the by."
Harriet looked sharply at the coat, and, passing the chair on which it lay on her way to her own, felt its texture with a furtive touch. Then she sat down, gave Dallas wine, and once more fell to examining the bracelet. It might have occurred to any other man in George's position that it was rather an odd proceeding on the part of Mrs. Routh to keep him there at so late an hour with no apparent purpose, and without any expressed expectation of Routh's return; but George seldom troubled himself with reflections upon anybody's conduct, and invariably followed Harriet's lead without thinking about it at all. Recent events had shaken Routh's influence, and changed the young man's views and tastes, but Harriet still occupied her former place in his regard and in his habit of life, which in such cases as his signified much. With a confidential air she now talked to him, her busy fingers twisting the bracelet as she spoke, her pale face turned to him, but her eyes somewhat averted. She told him that Routh had been surprised and annoyed at his (Dallas) being so long away from town, and had written to him, to tell him that he had been so pressed for money, so worried by duns, and so hampered by the slow proceeding of the company connected with the new speculation, that he had been obliged to go away, and must keep away, until Dallas could let him have one hundred and forty pounds. George was concerned to hear all this, and found it hard to reconcile with the good spirits in which Routh had been when he had seen him last; but he really knew so little of the man's affairs beyond having a general notion that they were hopelessly complicated, and subject to volcanic action of an utterly disconcerting nature, that he regarded his own surprise as unreasonable, and forbore to express it.
"It is of the utmost importance to Stewart to have the money at once," Harriet continued. "You see that, yourself; he told you all in his letter."
"Very extraordinary it should have been lost! Directed to P.O., Amherst, of course? I wish I had got it, Mrs. Routh; I'd have gone at once and sold the bracelet before I came to you at all, and brought the money. But I can do it early in the morning, can't I? I can take it to some good jeweller and get cash for it, and be here by twelve o'clock, so as not to keep Routh a moment longer than I need in suspense. Will a hundred and forty square him for the present, Mrs. Routh? I'm sure to get more for the bracelet--don't you think so?--and of course he can have it all, if he wants it."
The young man spoke in an eager tone, and the woman listened with a swelling heart. Her full red lip trembled for a passing instant--consideration for--kindness to the only human creature she loved touched Harriet as nothing besides had power to touch her.
"I am sure the bracelet is worth more than that sum," she said; "it is worth more than two hundred pounds, I dare say. But you forget, Mr. Dallas, that you must not be too precipitate in this matter. It is of immense importance to Stewart to have this money, but there are precautions to be taken."
"Precautions, Mrs. Routh! what precautions? The bracelet's my own, isn't it, and principally valuable because there's no bother about selling a thing of the kind?"