“We are all wrong,” he said, as he hurried in, his heart beating complete forgiveness, happiness in store, and everything exactly as he wished.
He turned back to the door, slipped the bolt, and then seated himself at the table with his back to the window, and cut the string of the parcel with a razor.
“She has relented, and it is a present,” he said to himself, as he tingled with pleasure; “a present and a letter.”
He stopped, with his fingers twitching nervously and his eyes going from parcel to note and back again.
Which should he open first—note or parcel?
He took the parcel, unfastened the paper, and found a neat cardboard box; and he had only to take off the lid to see its contents, but he held himself back from the fulfilment of his delight by taking up the note, opening it, and reading—
“Mrs Sarson would be greatly obliged by Mr Wimble’s attention to the enclosed at once. To be returned within a week.”
“Attention—returned—a week!” faltered Wimble; and with a sudden snatch he raised the lid, and sat staring dismally at its contents.
“And me to have seen her all these times and not to know that,” he groaned, as he rested his elbows on the table and his brow upon his hands, gazing the while dismally into the box. “Ah! false one—false as false can be. Why, I’ve gazed at her fondly hundreds o’ times, but love is blind, and—yes,” he muttered, as he took the object from the box and rested it upon his closed fist in the position it would have occupied when in use, “there is some excuse. As good a skin parting as I ever saw. One of Ribton’s, I suppose.”
There was a long and dismal silence as Michael Wimble, feeling that he was thoroughly disillusioned, slowly replaced the object in its box.