"It is Miss Burgess, then, whom I have the honour of addressing?"
"I am Mary Burgess, yes; but, as I was remarking, it is more to the purpose to say that both my brother and Walter Wilson are strongly prejudiced against you; and unless your design in coming here is clearly and plainly of a friendly and honourable nature, I am sorry you should have come at all."
"My motive is both honourable and friendly, I know," said John, quietly, "and I trust it will be so understood. Unfortunately, it should be otherwise, I for one shall deeply regret it."
There was another awkward silence; and then again the lady spoke.
"Mr. Tincroft," she said, "I have read somewhere that half the troubles in life—the minor troubles I mean, of course—would be escaped, if those who live in the world would be but true to each other, open and straightforward. And I very much believe it. Now we two are thrown into each other's society under rather exceptional circumstances, and, at any rate, we are strangers to each other. Is it not so?"
It certainly was so, John admitted.
"But that is no reason why we should not be plain and outspoken. I told you a minute ago that I would rather not speak of my preconceptions of the Mr. Tincroft of whom I had heard. Let me say now that those preconceptions, as far as they may have been unfavourable, are to a great extent removed. At any rate, I believe I may trust you."
"You do me great honour," said John, with a kind of pleasurable emotion.
"And I ask you, Mr. Tincroft, to trust me. Do you think you can?"
John had never been addressed in this way before by any living woman. Have we not said that it was his misfortune to have been, from childhood, almost bereft of female society? To be sure, of late, he had known Sarah Wilson, and had seen something—a very little—of Mrs. Mark Wilson; he had been intimate also with good obese Mrs. Barry, and had been waited on by Mrs. Barry the younger. But here, setting aside the female domestics of the Manor House, his experience almost ended.