"Ah?"
"The General was going to take a drive to visit a friend, and she took it into her head to accompany him. Of course he had to take her. It was very inconvenient--and very ridiculous--but the moment she proposed it he assented, with only a very faint effort at dissuasion. So they have gone, and will not be back for some hours."
"I hope you will allow me to say," remarked Gualtier, in a low voice, "that I consider her absence rather an advantage than otherwise."
"You could hardly feel otherwise," said Hilda. "You have not yet got a broken head, it is true; but it is coming. Some day you will not walk out of the house. You will be carried out."
"You speak bitterly."
"I feel bitterly."
"Has any thing new happened?" he asked, following up the advantage which her confession gave him.
"No; it is the old story. Interminable troubles, which have to be borne with interminable patience."
There was a long silence. "You spoke once," said Gualtier at last, in a low tone, "of something which you promised one day to tell me--some papers. You said that you would show them some day when we were better acquainted. Are we not better acquainted? You have seen me now for many weeks since that time, and ought to know whether I am worthy to be trusted or not."
"Mr. Gualtier," said Hilda, frankly, and without hesitation, "from my point of view I have concluded that you are worthy to be trusted. I have decided to show you the paper."