Her hands were before her face as if she would conceal its tribulation from the dark night. Robert Hunter, who had been standing, drew her hands within his, sat down beside her on the narrow bench, and kept them there.
"Time is wearing on, Mary Anne, and I must be at Jutpoint to-night. May I say what I came down from town to say? Though it pains me to enter upon it now you are in this grief."
"What is it, Robert?"
"You have not forgotten that there was a probability of my going abroad? Well, the arrangements are now concluded, and I start in the course of a few days. I did not think of being off before the summer, but it has been settled differently."
"Yes. Well?"
"This alters my position altogether in a pecuniary point of view, and I shall now rest at ease, the future assured. The climate is excellent; the residence out all that can be wished for. In a week from this I ought to take my departure."
"Yes," she repeated, in the same tone of apathy as before. "What else? Make haste, Robert--I must begone; I am beginning to shiver. I have these shivering fits often now."
"I want you to go with me, my love," he whispered, in an accent of deep tenderness. "I came down to urge it; but now that this unfortunate affair has been made known to me, I would doubly urge it. As my wife, you will forget----"
"Be quiet, Robert!" she impetuously interrupted, "you cannot know what you are saying."
"Yes, I do; I wish you to understand I may be away for five years."