“He thinks it will be all over in the morning, but he does not know me.” So thought Aunt Dinah, folding her cold hands together. “Gone to bed; his last night at Gilroyd.”
Holding her mind stiffly in this attitude with a corresponding pose and look she sate, and in a minute more William Maubray entered the room very pale, his outside coat was on, and his hat in his hand. His lip trembled a little, and he walked very quickly to the side of her chair, laid his hand softly on her shoulder, and stooping down kissed her cheek, and without a word left the room.
She heard the hall door open, and Tom’s voice talking with him as their steps traversed the gravel, and the jarring sound of the iron gate on its hinges. “Good-night,” said the well-known voice, so long beloved; and “Good-night, Mr. William, good-night, Sir,” in Tom’s gruff voice, and a little more time the gate clanged, and Tom’s lonely step came back.
“He had no business to open the gate without my order,” said Miss Perfect.
She was thinking of blowing Tom up, but her pride prevented; and, as Tom entered in reply to her bell, she asked as nearly as she could in her usual way—
“My nephew did not take away his trunk?”
“No, Mum.”
“He gave directions about his things, of course?”
“Yes, they’re to follow, Mum, by the mornin’ coach to Cambridge.”
“H’m! very good; that’s all. You had better get to your bed now. Good-night.”