But Priscilla noticed the hurt tone in his voice, and was touched. “I would like to very much, thank you,” she said weakly. “I am dreadfully tired,” she added, almost as though the words escaped her against her will. The next moment she was crossing the bare stone hall into which Loveday had peered so enviously, and was admitted to Mr. Winter’s own private sitting-room, which no one but himself had entered for years.
Of all the women in this wide world, Mr. Winter’s housekeeper was at that moment the most astounded, and what to make of things, and of the change in her master, she did not know. But in her heart she very much wished that she had treated this little visitor more civilly when she had first come knocking at the door.
Priscilla sat in a big arm-chair, and drank milk and ate biscuits, and Mr. Winter sat in another and stared out of window, his mind absorbed in thoughts. They wandered far and wide, yet when, presently, Priscilla’s voice broke the silence, both his and hers must have been hovering near the same subject.
“Miss Potts,” she broke out suddenly—“she is a friend of mine at home,” she explained—“Miss Potts couldn’t bear the sight of the sea either; it had swallowed up all her family, all but her and her mother.” Mr. Winter’s eyelids quivered, and his face contracted sharply, but Priscilla could not see his face, or she might have paused in what she was saying. As it was, though, she continued: “But she left it. She didn’t draw her blinds because she couldn’t bear to look at it, but she went right away, and—and she told me she had been ever so much happier ever since.”
A deep silence followed her remarks, a silence which presently frightened Priscilla, and as it continued, she slipped off her chair and crept to the door. She felt that she had offended past forgiveness. “I ought not to have mentioned the sea, or the blinds, or let him know I knew anything about the story,” she thought with a sudden, overwhelming sense of her own want of tact. But when she reached the door she paused; she could not, after all his kindness, go and leave him without a word. So she crept back again very gently and very slowly, until she reached his side.
“I—I am dreadfully sorry,” she gasped. “I did not mean to hurt you.” Then, as still he did not speak, in real distress she laid her hand on his thin hand as it rested on his knee, while the other supported his head. “Mr. Winter,” she said, in a frightened voice, her lip quivering, “I am so sorry; I did not mean to hurt you, only I—I felt so sorry for you, and—”
“You haven’t hurt me, child,” he said at last, speaking very slowly, in a curious still voice; “it is I who have hurt myself all these years. I was very glad to hear about your friend. I am grateful to you for telling me about her. She was a wise and brave woman. Now,” rousing himself and rising, “if you are rested you would like to go home, I expect. I will see you to the gate.”
At the gate he took the little hand she held out. “You will come and see me again, I hope?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” said Priscilla warmly; “I will come quite soon, if you would like me to.”
As she walked away she turned every now and then to wave her hand to the solitary-looking old man who stood at his gate, and watched her until she had disappeared from his sight.