“Good-night,” answered Griffith; “but might n't he have put it the other way, Dolly, 'Be happy, and you will be good—because you can't help it'?”
He had his hand on her shoulder, this time, and as she laughed she put her face down so that her soft, warm cheek nestled against it.
“But he didn't put it that way,” she objected. “And we must take wisdom as it comes. There! I must go now,” rather in a hurry. “Some one is coming—see!”
“Confound it!” he observed, devoutly. “Who is it?”
“I don't know,” answered Dolly; “but you must let me go. Good-night, again.”
He released her, and she ran in through the gate, and up the gravel walk, and so he was left to turn away and pass the intruder with an appearance of nonchalance. And pass him he did, though whether with successful indifference or not, one can hardly say; but in passing him he looked up, and in looking up he recognized Ralph Gowan.
“Going to see her,” he said, to himself, just as poor Mollie had said the same thing, and just with the same heartburn. “The dev—But, no,” he broke off sharply, “I won't begin again. It is as she says,—the blessed little darling!—it is shabby to be down on him because he has the best of it.” And he went on his way, not rejoicing, it is true, but still trying to crush down a by no means unnatural feeling of rebellion.
CHAPTER X. ~ IN SLIPPERY PLACES.
THE wise one sat at the window and looked out. The view commanded by Bloomsbury Place was not a specially imposing or attractive one. Four or five tall, dingy houses with solitary scrubby shrubs in their small front slips of low-spirited looking gardens, four or five dingy and tall houses without the scrubby shrubs in their small front slips of low-spirited looking gardens, rows of Venetian blinds of various shades, and one or two lamp-posts,—not much to enliven the prospect.