"Well, I can't let you take these sonnets on trust. For this time, your principle doesn't apply, you see. You can't say you're accepting this dedication because I don't want to give it to you." Though he laughed he rose and backed towards the door, suddenly anxious to be gone.
"Isn't it enough that I want to accept it?"
He shook his head, still backing, and at the door he paused to speak. "You've accepted nothing—as yet."
"Of course," she said to herself, "it would have been wiser to have read them first. But I can trust him."
But as she was about to read them a knock, a familiar knock at the door interrupted her. "Kitty!"
She laid the manuscript hastily aside, well out of Kitty's roving sight. She had noticed how his hands had trembled as he brought it; she did not notice that her own shook a little in thus putting it away from her.
Kitty Palliser, up in town for a week, had come less on her own account than as an impetuous ambassador from the now frantic Edith. She too was prepared to move heaven and earth, if only she could snatch her Lucy from Tavistock Place. But her anxiety was not wholly on Lucia's account, as presently appeared.
"How can you stand it for a minute?" said she.
"I'm standing it very well indeed."
"But what on earth do you find to do all day long, when," said Kitty severely, "you're not talking to young Rickman?"