“Do you think he has heard of anything for me?” was one of the first questions she put.
“Eh, my dear, and how should I know?” was the old lady’s reply. “He does not tell me of his affairs. Not but what he talks to me a good deal, and always like a friend: he does not forget that my late leddy, his mother, made more of a friend of me than a servant. Many’s the half-hour he keeps me talking in his parlour; and always bids me take the easiest seat there. I wish he would marry!”
“Do you?” replied Anne, mechanically: for she was thinking more of her own concerns than Sir Robert’s.
“Why, yes, that I do. It’s a lonely life for him at best, the one he leads. I’ve not scrupled to tell him, times and oft, that he ought to bring a mistress home—— Eh, but there he is! That’s his step.”
As before, Anne went into the pretty room that Sir Robert, when alone, mostly sat in. Three or four opened letters lay upon the table, and she wondered whether they related to her.
“No, I have as yet no news for you,” he said, smiling at her eager face, and keeping her hand in his while he spoke. “You will have to come again for it. Sit down.”
“But if—if you have nothing to tell me to-day, I had better not take up your time,” said Anne, not liking to appear intrusive.
“My time! If you knew how slowly time some days seems to pass for me, you would have no scruple about ‘taking it up.’ Sit here. This is a pleasant seat.”
With her eyes fixed on the outer landscape, Anne sat on and listened to him. He talked of various things, and she felt as much at her ease (as she told me that same evening) as though she had been talking with me. Afterwards she felt half afraid she had been too open, for she told him all about her childhood’s home in France and her dear mother. It was growing dusk when she got up to go.