‘My love,’ said her father, ‘you will know some day that I would do more for you even than give you my pet diamond. If you are a good girl, and do as I tell you, there will be grander things than diamond pins in store for you. But you may have this if you like.’
He looked fondly at her as he spoke.
‘Oh no, papa!—not now at least. I should not know what to do with it. I should be sure to lose it.’
If my clothes had been dry, I would have slipped away, put them on, and appeared in my proper guise. As it was, I was getting more and more miserable—ashamed of revealing who I was, and ashamed of hearing what the speakers supposed I did not understand. I sat on irresolute. In a little while, however, either the wine having got into my head, or the food and warmth having restored my courage, I began to contemplate the bolder stroke of suddenly revealing myself by some unexpected remark. They went on talking about the country, and the road they had come.
‘But we have hardly seen anything worth calling a precipice,’ said Clara.
‘You’ll see hundreds of them if you look out of the window,’ said her father.
‘Oh! but I don’t mean that,’ she returned. ‘It’s nothing to look at them like that. I mean from the top of them—to look down, you know.’
‘Like from the flying buttress at Moldwarp Hall, Clara?’ I said.
The moment I began to speak, they began to stare. Clara’s hand was arrested on its way towards the bread, and her father’s wine-glass hung suspended between the table and his lips. I laughed.
‘By Jove!’ said Mr Coningham—and added nothing, for amazement, but looked uneasily at his daughter, as if asking whether they had not said something awkward about me.