The confidence was placed suddenly, and at a time when Mattie was scarcely prepared for it—Mattie who yet, by some strange instinct, had been patiently waiting for it.
"I believe when that girl's in trouble, she will come to me," Mattie thought, "for she knows I would do anything to serve her. Have I any one to love except her in the world?—is there any one who requires so much love to keep her, what I call, strong?"
Mattie had seen that Harriet Wesden was not strong—that she was tender-hearted, affectionate, and weak—that there were times when she might give way without a strong heart and a stout hand to assist her. She had been a weak, impulsive, passionate child—she had grown up a woman very different to Mattie, whose firmness, and even hardness, had made Harriet wonder more than once. And Mattie had often wondered at Harriet in her turn—at her vanity and romantic ideas, and made excuses for her, as we all do, for those we love very dearly. She had even feared for her, until the half engagement with Sidney Hinchford had taken place, and then she had noticed that Harriet had become more staid and womanly, and was glad in her heart that it had happened thus.
Then finally and suddenly the last change swept over the surface of things—all the worse for our characters perhaps, but infinitely better for our story, which takes a new lease of life from this page.
CHAPTER V.
MR. WESDEN TURNS ECCENTRIC.
The nights "drew in" more and more; and nearer and nearer with the shortest day approached the end of Sidney Hinchford's probation. Only a week or two between the final explanations of Sid's position—of his chances in the future perhaps—everything very quiet and still at Suffolk Street and Camberwell—a deceptive calm before the storm that was brewing.
Harriet Wesden called more frequently at the stationer's shop; she was glad to escape from the long evenings at home, and the watchful, ever anxious eyes of her father, and it was easy to frame an excuse to repair to Great Suffolk Street. Occasionally Sidney Hinchford knew of her propinquity, and escorted her home—more often missed his chances of a tête-à-tête—three or four times, and greatly to his annoyance, crossed her in the journey, and reached Camberwell to spend the evening with a fidgety old man and his invalid spouse.
At this time it also happened that Sidney Hinchford fell into a dreamy absent way, for which there appeared no valid reasons, unless he had become alive to the doubts of Harriet's affection for him; an absence of mind, and even an irritability, which was disguised well enough from the father—before whom Sidney was more or less an actor—but which Mattie, ever on the watch, was quick as usual to detect.