“Very well,” said Hester, quietly; “I do not want convincing. Tell me what part I am to take. You may trust me for being very careful; for I am as well aware as you what is at stake. I do not know whether my being able to draw will be of any use to you.”
“I am not sure but it may,” replied Edgar. “Your best way of helping us, however, will be in doing our out-door work: in making our purchases; in——”
“In passing your notes, you mean. I am afraid,——I have so little presence of mind——.” The sight of Edgar’s grave looks reminded her to make no difficulties; and she went on. “However, I can plan what to say when they refuse a note; and when they make no difficulty, there is only the fear to go through: and that is not so bad as not being trusted. I can do anything, if I am trusted.”
“Had not you better go upstairs, and see what we have been doing?” said Edgar. “And yet,—perhaps,—it may turn out a safer thing for you to be able to swear that you never saw our apparatus, or set foot on that floor, since——”
“I must know all now,” said Hester, rising: “and as for swearing,—when one is once in——”
“True, true,” replied her husband, astonished at her calmness, and beginning to think that he had mistaken his companion’s capabilities all this while. “There are the keys. Go and look about you; and I will explain it all when you come down.”
“I suppose,” said Hester, returning from the door, “I suppose the gentleman who dined with you shares the office that I am to have. He does your out-door business too, does not he?”
“Who, Carter? What made you think so? He travels for a paper-maker.”
“Carter!” exclaimed Hester, reproachfully.[reproachfully.] “Edgar, you will gain nothing by such half-confidences as yours. You think because Cavendish now wears black whiskers, and because I sat behind him, that I should not know him. How blind you must think me!”
Edgar protested that he meant no deceit, but that he had been so used of late to call Cavendish by his new name, as to forget that he had ever been known by any other. He begged that Hester would be particularly careful to address him properly on all occasions, and also to spare his feelings by avoiding any allusion to Haleham and its inhabitants. Hester readily promised this, feeling that there would be little temptation to mention Rhoda and her lover, or any of their injured neighbours, in the presence of the swindler, whose sensibility had come somewhat too late to be of any advantage to them.