“Cheer up, won’t you? She is quite certain to marry you in the long run.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Rochester in a voice of pain.
“Don’t what? You do want to marry Lady Helen. I heard mother say so yesterday. I heard her say so to Hortense. Hortense was brushing her hair, and mother said, ‘It would be a good match on the whole for Lady Helen, ’cos she is as poor as a church mouse, and Jim Rochester has money.’ Is my darling Lady Helen as poor as a church mouse, and have you lots of money, Mr. Rochester?”
“I have money, but not lots. You ought not to repeat what you hear,” said the young man.
“But why? I thought everybody knew. You are always trying to make her marry you, I see it in your eyes; you don’t know how you look when you look at her, oh—ever so eager, same as I look when father’s in the room and he is not talking to me. I hope you will marry her, more especial if she’s as poor as a church mouse. I never knew why mice were poor, nor why mother said it, but she did. Oh, and there is mother, I must fly to her; good-by—good-by.”
Rochester concealed his feelings as best he could, and hurried immediately into a distant part of the grounds, where he cogitated over what Sibyl, in her childish, way, had revealed.
The pony had been purchased, and Sibyl had ridden it once. It was a bright bay with a white star on its forehead. It was a well-groomed, well-trained little animal, and Lord Grayleigh had given Sibyl her first riding lesson, and had shown her how to hold the reins, and how to sit on her saddle, and the riding habit had come from town, and the saddle was the newest and most comfortable that money could buy.
“It is my present to you,” said Lord Grayleigh, “and remember when you ride it that you are going to be a good girl.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Sibyl, “I don’t want everyone to tell me that I am to be a good girl. If it was father; but—don’t please, Lord Grayleigh; I’ll do a badness if you talk to me any more about being so good.”