"Do you think there's hope, Karl?" she piteously asked--almost as if all hope had left herself.
"I don't know, Rose. Mr. Moore has not told me there is none."
"Perhaps it is that he will not say," she rejoined, resting her elbow on the green steps amid the plants, and her cheek on her hand. "I seem to see it, Karl; to see what is coming. Indeed, you might tell me the truth. I shall not feel it quite so much as I should had our circumstances been happier."
"I have told you as far as I know, Rose."
"There's my little baby gone: there's my husband going: all my treasures will be in the better world. I shall have nothing to do but live on for, and look forward to, the time when I may go to them. Six months ago, Karl, had I known Adam must die, I think the grief would have killed me. But the apprehension we have undergone the last few weeks--Adam's dread, and my awful fear for him--has gone a great way to reconcile me. I see--and I think he sees--that Death would not be the worst calamity. Better for him to be at rest than live on in that frightful peril night and day; each moment as it passes one of living agony, lest the next should bring the warders of Portland Island to retake him. No wonder it is wearing him out."
Karl went away echoing the last sentence; every word she had spoken leaving its echo of pain on his heart. No: it was no wonder that fatal illness had seized on Adam Andinnian before its time.
Well, on this day Karl was not to escape unnoticed so easily. Ann Hopley unlocked the gate, and then both of them stood listening according to custom. Not a sound broke the stillness, save the furious chirping somewhere of two quarrelsome sparrows: not a step could be heard awaking the echoes or the ground. Ann Hopley drew back the half of the gate, and Karl went forth.
Went forth to find himself, so to say, in the very arms of Mrs. Cleeve and Miss Blake. They were standing quite still (which fact accounted for their footsteps not being heard) gazing at these same two fighting birds in the hedge. What with Karl's naturally nervous organization, and what with the dread secret he had just left, every drop of blood went out of his face. But he did not lose his presence of mind.
"Looking on at a fight, Mrs. Cleeve!" he exclaimed in a light tone. "Birds have their hasty passions as well as men, you see. You wicked combatants! Let one another's heads alone. They'll not look any the better without feathers."
One of the noisy birds, as if in obedience, flew away to a distant tree; the other followed it. Karl stayed talking for a minute with the ladies; heard that they had come out for a little walk; and then he went on to his home. Mrs. Cleeve, as she continued her way, glanced inquisitively at the iron gate in passing.