‘Oh, it can’t be that! Oh, he knows I wouldn’t leave him! Mr. Kirkwood, you don’t think my father will give us any trouble?’
She revealed an anxiety which delicacy of feeling had hitherto prevented her expressing. Sidney at once spoke reassuringly, though he had in fact no little suspicion of Joseph Snowdon’s tactics.
‘It’s my grandfather that I ought to think most of,’ pursued Jane earnestly. ‘I can’t feel to my father as I do to him. What should I have been now if—’
Something caused her to leave the speech unfinished, and for a few moments there was silence. From the ground exhaled a sweet fresh odour, soothing to the senses, and at times a breath of air brought subtler perfume from the alleys of the garden. In the branches above them rustled a bird’s wing. At a distance on the country road sounded the trotting of a horse.
‘I feel ashamed and angry with myself,’ said Sidney, in a tone of emotion, ‘when I think now of those times. I might have done something, Jane. I had no right to know what you were suffering and just go by as if it didn’t matter!’
‘Oh, but you didn’t!’ came eagerly from the girl’s lips. ‘You’ve forgotten, but I can’t. You were very kind to me—you helped me more than you can think—you never saw me without speaking kindly. Don’t you remember that night when I came to fetch you from the workshop, and you took off your coat and put it over me, because it was cold and raining?’
‘Jane, what a long, long time ago that seems!’
‘As long as I live I shall never forget it—never! You were the only friend I had then.’
‘No; there was some one else who took thought for you,’ said Sidney, regarding her gravely.
Jane met his look for an instant—they could just read each other’s features in the pale light—then dropped her eyes.