“That has been a consolation; and then—But I must not trouble you with all my reasons for staying away, when most likely you never observed that I stayed away at all.”
Ally made no reply to this speech, which was so full of meaning. It was, indeed, so full of evident meaning that it put her on her guard.
“My father is in town,” she said, “if it is business; but perhaps mother—”
“I am too glad,” he said, “to meet you first, even for the business’ sake.”
Ally looked up at him with wondering eyes. What she could have to do with business of any kind, what light he could expect her to throw on any such subject, she could not understand. But there was something soothing, something pleasant, in thus strolling along the path by the flowing river with him by her side. She forgot a little the watch she had been keeping upon the gate. She recollected that he had once told her his dream about a flood, and coming in a boat to her window, but that she would not take advantage of the boat herself, only kept handing out the children to him one by one. How could he divine that she would do that? for of course that was exactly what she would do, if such a risk could ever happen, and if he should come to rescue her as in his dream.
Somehow he led her without any apparent compulsion, yet by a persistent impulse, a little way out of sight of the house behind a tuft of shrubbery. The big laurels stood up in their glistening greenness and shut out the pair from the windows of the Hook. They were close to the gray swirl of the river running still and swift almost on a level with the bank, when he said to her suddenly with his eyes fixed on her face, “I want to ask you something about your—brother.”
“My brother!” cried Ally. There was a sudden wild flushing up of color which she felt to the roots of her hair, and then a chill fell upon her, and paleness. He was watching her closely, and though she was not aware of it she had answered his question. “My brother,” she repeated, faltering, “Wat? he—he is not at home.”
“Miss Penton,” said Rochford, “do you think you could trust me?”
“Trust you!” said Ally, her voice growing fainter: and then a great panic came over her. “Oh! Mr. Rochford,” she cried, “if anything has happened to Wat, tell me, tell me! It is the not knowing that is so dreadful to bear.”
“I hope nothing has happened to him,” he said, very gravely. “It is only that I have had a letter from him, and I thought that perhaps your father had better know.”