"I wish it, then!"
"Very well."
"Go—to return again very frequently with your father, and see that I am well, and likely to do well. Mattie, for ever after this understand that I cannot do utterly without you. Wrong and selfish also in that wish, perhaps, but I am sure of you forgiving me!"
"Yes—yes," she said, hurriedly. "It is strange that we three should all have been thinking of going away to-day—and perhaps," with a blush, "it was scarcely right to come. But," evincing here her old rebellious spirit, with a suddenness that made her father and Sidney leap again, "if he were the same man I found here first, I would have stopped—mark that!"
"Yes, but he isn't, my dear!" said Mr. Gray, cowed into submission, and afraid of Mattie talking herself into a change of mind; "so it's all happened for the best, and we are all thankful, and—all friends!"
"I will be ready when you wish, then."
"I have ordered a cab to come round at twelve. You see I was sure that you would not turn against me ever again."
"I never turned against you—don't think that."
Mattie went out of the room—was a long while gone—returned with her eyes red and swollen, as though she had been weeping. The cab at the same time rattled up to the door, and Ann Packet—with red and swollen eyes also, if she could have been seen just then—was heard struggling down-stairs with Mattie's box, which she had not allowed Mattie to touch.
"Go and talk to Mr. Sidney again, gal. You mayn't have another chance," she had said, and Mattie had started and glared at her as at a phantom. Surely it was time for her to go, when this faithful but dull-witted woman saw through the veil which she believed had hidden her true heart from every one on earth. But that must be fancy, she thought, and she went back to the room to bid Sidney good-bye, and to check the thanks with which he would have overwhelmed her.