“What news?” she asked very softly, sliding through the water to the side of the bath nearest to him, and leaning her bare wet arms on the tiles of the floor. For she began, now that her fright was over, to see that he was unhappy.
He paused for a few moments to consider how he should best break it to her. At last it came out, however, with masculine bluntness.
“You know what you would say, Nouna, if you heard that there had been a mistake—about the money—supposed to be left us, and that we were as poor as ever again, and had to give up this house and everything—even your jewels!”
The water all round the poor child began to quiver with little widening ripples, as she trembled at the shock of this most dire calamity; even his previous suggestion of it seemed to have had no effect in softening the blow. As for George, he felt that all the previous horrors of the miserable day had produced no pang so acute as the one he now felt, when he had to deal with his own hands the blow which crushed, for the time at least, all the bright happiness of the only creature he loved in the world. He sat like a culprit, with hanging head and loosely clasped hands, too much afraid of breaking down himself to attempt to soften the gloomy picture by a word of hope. It was she who broke the silence first.
“My jewels! No, I sha’n’t have to give those up,” she whispered eagerly, “for they were given me by mamma!”
George looked at her with haggard eyes, noticing that the mere mention of her mother soothed her, let in a ray of sweet sunshine at once upon the black-looking prospect.
“But supposing we were so badly in debt that even they had to be sold!” he suggested in a hoarse voice that he tried in vain to clear.
“Then I should drown myself!” cried Nouna tragically, and she descended a step lower into the water as if to fulfil the dread purpose immediately.
“What, Nouna!” cried George, “don’t you think me worth living for? Do you think, when I’ve lost everything else, you ought to take away just what would console me for it all? Do you, Nouna?”
She hung her head, and crawling, meek and ashamed like a truant dog, out of the water, laid herself face downwards on the tiled floor at a little distance from his feet. But when he stooped towards her she said, her voice ringing out with passionate sincerity: