“That is what I feel, too,” cried the young man, with eagerness. “But perhaps,” he added, “it is no real reason; for doesn’t it often happen that people break down just at the moment when they come in sight of what they have wished for for years and years?”
“I don’t know,” said Dora, recovering her courage. “I have not heard of things so dreadful as that. I can’t imagine that it could be permitted to be; for things don’t happen just by chance, do they? They are,” she added quite inconclusively, “as father says, all in the day’s work.”
“I don’t know either,” said young Gordon; “but very cruel things do happen. However, there is nothing in the world she wishes for so much as you. Will you come to her? I am sure that you have never been out of her mind for years. She used to talk to me about you. It was our secret between us two. I think that was the chief thing that made her take to me as she did, that she might have some one to speak to about Dora. I used to wonder what you were at first,—an idol, or a prodigy, or a princess.”
“You must have been rather disgusted when you found I was only a girl,” Dora cried, in spite of herself.
He looked at her with a discriminative gaze, not uncritical, yet full of warm light that seemed to linger and brighten somehow upon her, and which, though Dora was looking straight before her, without a glance to the right or left, or any possibility of catching his eye, she perceived, though without knowing how.
“No,” he said, with a little embarrassed laugh, “quite the reverse, and always hoping that one day we might be friends.”
Dora made no reply. For one thing they had now come (somehow the walk went much faster, much more easily, when there was no big book to carry) to the passage leading to Holborn, a narrow lane paved with big flags, and with dull shops, principally book-shops, on either side, where Fiddler, the eminent old bookseller and collector, lived. Her mind had begun to be occupied by the question how to shake this young man off and discharge her commission, which was not an easy one. She hardly heard what he last said. She said to him hastily, “Please give me back the book, this is where I am going,” holding out her hands for it. She added, “Thank you very much,” with formality, but yet not without warmth.
“Mayn’t I carry it in?” He saw by her face that this request was distasteful, and hastened to add, “I’ll wait for you outside; there are quantities of books to look at in the windows,” giving it back to her without a word.
Dora was scarcely old enough to appreciate the courtesy and good taste of his action altogether, but she was pleased and relieved, though she hardly knew why. She went into the shop, very glad to deposit it upon the counter, but rather troubled in mind as to how she was to accomplish her mission, as she waited till Mr. Fiddler was brought to her from the depths of the cavern of books. He began to turn over the book with mechanical interest, thinking it something brought to him to sell, then woke up, and said sharply: “Why, this is a book I sent to Mr. Mannering of the Museum a month ago".
“Yes,” said Dora, breathless, “and I am Mr. Mannering’s daughter. He has been very ill, and he wishes me to ask if you would be so good as to take it back. It is not likely to be of so much use to him as he thought. It is not quite what he expected it to be.”