She was thinking of him and not of herself at all. It was pity for him which made her voice falter and her soul quail within her, lest at that supreme moment he should have demanded from her, once for all, another sort of dismissal.
As to love, her heart was loyal to her Willie; and yet, though she would not have confessed it even to herself, she had a secret sense as the door closed upon this other one that she had burned her boats.
CHAPTER XXI.
A TIFF.
When one is not en rapport with one’s friends about any particular subject, in which for the time they are interested, it is better to leave them, for it is certain they would rather have our room than our company. If you happen to be at Bullock Smithy, for example, during a contested election, when your host at the Hall and all his family are looking forward to the regeneration of the species—conditional upon the return of Mr. Brown—and you don’t much care about it yourself (or even doubt of its being accomplished that way), you had better for the present leave the Hall and revisit it under less exciting circumstances. They will politely lament your departure, but privately be very glad to get rid of you. You may be (you are) a charming person, but just now you are a little in the way. They resent your presence as spirit-rappers resent that of ‘the sceptic,’ as they call every one endowed with reason and common-sense. The common harmony is disturbed by it as by a false note.
Thus it happened that the withdrawal of Frank Dennis from his friends in Norfolk Street was upon the whole a relief to them. They could talk unreservedly among themselves of the subject that lay next their hearts, and which was really assuming great importance for all of them.
If the mere amount of the Shakespearean manuscripts could have assured, as it undoubtedly made more probable, their authenticity, the voice of detraction ought to have been silenced; for there was some new discovery made in that wonderful treasure chamber of the Temple almost every day. Contracts and mortgages, theatrical disbursements, miscellaneous letters, deeds of gift, all immediately relating to Shakespeare, if not in his very hand, were constantly being found. Records which a few months ago would have filled Mr. Erin’s heart with rapture were now, indeed, welcomed by him, but almost as a matter of course. ‘The gentleman of considerable property in the Temple,’ as the antiquary had been wont to vaguely term him, had now grown as familiar to him as though he had had a name as well as a local habitation.
‘Well, what news from our friend to-day, Samuel?’ was the cheery question he would address to his son on his return home every evening, and it was very seldom that there was no news.