"Will you answer me one or two questions, Miss Opportunity, with frankness, under the pledge that the replies never shall be used to injure you or yours? This is a very serious affair, and should be treated with perfect frankness."
"I will answer anything to you—any question you can put me, though I might blush to do so—but," laying her hand familiarly, not to say tenderly, on my arm—"why should we be Mr. Hugh and Miss Opportunity to each other, when we were so long Hugh and Op? Call me Op again, and I shall feel that the credit of my family and the happiness of my poor Sen are, after all, in the keeping of a true friend."
"No one can be more willing to do this than myself, my dear Op, and I am willing to be Hugh again. But, you know all that has passed."
"I do—yes, the dreadful news has reached us, and mother wouldn't leave me a moment's peace till I stole out again to see you."
"Again? Was your mother, then, acquainted with the visit of last night?"
"Yes, yes—she knew it all, and advised it all."
"Your mother is a most thoughtful and prudent parent," I answered, biting my lip, "and I shall know hereafter how much I am indebted to her. To you, Opportunity, I owe the preservation of my house, and possibly the lives of all who are most dear to me."
"Well, that's something, any how. There's no grief that hasn't its relief. But, you must know, Hugh, that I never could or did suppose that Sen himself would be so weak as to come in his own person on such an errand! I didn't want telling to understand that, in anti-rent times, fire and sword are the law—but, take him in general, Sen is altogether prudent and cautious. I'd a bit my tongue off before I'd got my own brother into so cruel a scrape. No, no—don't think so ill of me as to suppose I came to tell of Sen."
"It is enough for me that I know how much trouble you took to warn me of danger. It is unnecessary for me to think of you in any other light than that of a friend."
"Ah, Hugh! how happy and merry we all of us used to be a few years since! That was before your Miss Coldbrookes, and Miss Marstons, and Mary Warrens ever saw the country. Then we did enjoy ourselves, and I hope such times will return. If Miss Martha would only stick to old friends, instead of running after new ones, Ravensnest would be Ravensnest again."