“Mrs. Despard will come down, as soon as she hears that you are here,” she said, and then proceeded to fold the letter, and replace it in its envelope; and thus he saw that it bore the Pen’yllan post-mark.
What did such a whim as this mean? he asked himself, impatiently, taking in at a glance the new expression in her face, and the heaviness of her gloomy eyes. This was not one of her tricks. There was no one here to see her, and even if there had been, what end could she serve by crying over a letter from Pen’yllan? What, on earth, had she been crying for? He had never seen her shed a tear before in his life. He had often thought that such a thing was impossible, she was so hard. Could it be that she was not really so hard, after all, and that those three innocent old women could reach her heart? But the next minute he laughed at the absurdity of the idea, and Lisbeth, chancing to raise her eyes, and coolly fixing them on his face at that moment, saw his smile.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
A demon took possession of him at once. What if he should tell her, and see how she would answer? They knew each other. Why should they keep up this pretense of being nothing but ordinary acquaintances, with no unpleasant little drama behind?
“I was thinking what an amusing blunder I had been on the verge of making,” he said.
She did not answer, but still kept her eyes fixed upon him.
“I was trying to account for your sadness, on the same grounds that I would account for sadness in another woman. I was almost inclined to believe that something, in your letter, had touched your heart, as it might have touched Georgie Esmond’s. But I checked myself in time.”
“You checked yourself in time,” she said, slowly. “That was a good thing.”
There was a brief silence, during which he felt that, as usual, he had gained nothing by his sarcasm; and then suddenly she held out her mite of a hand, with Miss Clarissa’s letter in it, rather taking him aback.
“Would you like to read it?” she said. “Suppose you do. Aunt Clarissa is an old friend of yours. She speaks of you as affectionately as ever.”