Her voice had changed to the tenderest, coaxing tone.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, in sudden ecstasy, holding close to his side the hand that had stolen within his arm—and for some time could say no more.
“Well?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Walter, “I’ll tell you presently. I don’t know that I want to tell you at all. I want you to take an interest in me.”
“Oh, if that is all!” she said; then, after a moment, drew her arm away. “If we should meet any one, Mr. Walter Penton, it would not look at all pretty to see you walking arm in arm with a—girl who lives in the village; a girl whom nobody knows, and, of course, whom everybody thinks ill of; but I can hear you quite well without that. Come, tell me what it is. Did you say a fright or a fight?”
“Both,” said Walter. He made various attempts to recover the hand again, but they were all fruitless. The mere touch, however, had somehow—how he could not tell—made things more natural, harmonized all the contrarieties in life, brought back a better state of affairs. The fumes of sleep and fatigue seemed to die away from his brain: the atmosphere grew lighter. It did not occur to him that to disclose the most private affairs of his family to this little stranger was anything extraordinary. He told her all about the bargain between his father and his cousin, and how he himself had been left out, and his consent never asked, though he was the heir; and what had happened this morning—how he had been sent to fetch the parties to this bargain, and the papers, and how he had been tempted to delay or not to go.
“If I had not answered from my room when I heard them, if I had pretended not to hear, if I had only held back, which would have been no sin! Should I have done it? Shouldn’t I have done it?” cried Walter, quite unaware of the absurdity of his appeal.
The girl listened to all this with her head raised to him in an attitude of attention, but in reality with the most divided interest and a mind full of perplexed impatience. What did she care about his doubts—doubts and difficulties which she could not understand—which did not concern her? Her attention even flagged, though her looks did not. She wanted none of this grave talk: it was only the lighter kind of intercourse which she fully understood.
“Then it was you,” she said, seizing the only tangible point in all this outburst, “that I heard thundering past the cottage just before daylight? I couldn’t think what it could be!”
“Did you hear me? I looked up at the windows, but they were all closed and shut up. I wish,” cried the young man, “I had known you were awake, I should not have felt so desolate.”