Without answering in words, Olivia, who was trembling violently, took his hand, pressed it quickly for one moment in hers, and let it drop hastily, as if she had been too bold.
Then, without the exchange of a single word more, they walked through the narrow, hilly streets of Matherham, which they had now reached, until they came to the bank where Vernon kept an account. Olivia walked on while he went into the building; in a very few minutes he overtook her and put an envelope into her hand. She did not thank him; he did not give her time.
“I am very grateful,” he said simply: “I—I can’t say any more now. Good-bye.”
Olivia looked up and spoke with a sob in her voice.
“Good-bye,” she said.
Then they looked into each other’s eyes with the long, sad look of a farewell, and she was not surprised at his next words.
“I daresay,” he said in a hoarse voice, “that I shall be going away from here before long; I daresay I shall have to—when the tower is built,” he added in a whisper, looking down. “No, don’t say anything—I couldn’t bear it.”
But Olivia, though she tried, could utter no word. She wrung his hand and looked straight into his face with an expression of passionate sympathy and despair. Then, without another word, they parted.
CHAPTER XXV.
Olivia hurried back towards the farm with the little packet in her hand which was to release her father from his hateful indebtedness to Fred Williams. It was true it rendered her herself indebted to somebody else; but, with a woman’s perversity, she preferred the greater evil to the less. It was rather an awkward matter, however, to acquaint her father with what she had done, especially as she found him in the lowest depths of despondency.