“Never mind me. I have an hour or two’s work to do in the Bank to-night.”
“Oh, George!”
“My dear, it need not keep you up.”
“George, I cannot think how it is that you have night-work to do!” she impulsively exclaimed, after a pause. “I am sure Thomas would not wish you to do it. I think I shall ask him.”
George turned round and grasped her shoulder, quite sharply. “Maria!”
His grasp, I say, was sharp, his look and voice were imperatively stern. Maria felt frightened: she scarcely knew why. “What have I done?” she asked, timidly.
“Understand me, please, once for all. What I choose to do, does not regard my brother Thomas. I will have no tales carried to him.”
“Why do you mistake me so?” she answered, when she had a little recovered her surprise. “It cannot be well for you, or pleasant for you, to have so much work to do at night, and I thought Thomas would have told you not to do it. Tales! George, you know I should never tell them of you.”
“No, no; I know you would not, Maria. I have been idle of late, and am getting up my work; that’s all: but it would not do to let Thomas know it. You—you don’t tell Isaac that I sit up at the books?” he cried, almost in an accent of terror.
She looked up at him wonderingly, through her wet eyelashes. “Surely, no! Should I be likely to speak to Isaac of what you do? or to any one?”