“O, yes, yes,” murmured Lucy. “I think so.”
“And—but there, I’m making you worse. Let’s talk of something else.”
But Septimus Hardon’s attempts at starting fresh subjects for conversation were one and all failures, and Lucy was silent until they reached Essex-street; though hers were not tears kindred to those she had shed days—weeks—months back, and, as to her dreams that night, they must have been sweet to cause so happy a smile to play upon her lip; for though a tear once stole from the fringed lid, and lay like a pearl upon her cheek, it did not seem like a tear wrung from the heart, neither did the sigh which followed betoken sorrow; for it was a sigh like that sweet expiration some of us have heard when a confession has been wrung from lips we love, and those lips, when pressed, have hardly been withdrawn, but pouted sweetly, looking more ruddy for shame.
Only yesterday that they wore that look; it can’t be further back than the day before, or, say last week; and—the sweet recollection clings—“There, I do wish to goodness, dear, you would not always make a point of firing off into conversation directly I sit down to read or write. Now what is it? ‘Young Fitzpater was too attentive to Maude last night?’ Pooh! nonsense! sugar-candy! Why, the child isn’t seventeen yet, and—”
That could not have been last week, after all. How time does fly!
Volume Three—Chapter Fourteen.
In the Rat’s Hole.
“Hush!” cried ma mère, recovering from her tremor; “but I have another piece. You fool, Jean! are you afraid to be in the dark? Here is the candle, but where are the matches?” and the old woman kept on feeling about in her huge pocket, but found them not. “You have the matches, Jean!” she exclaimed at last.