‘Oh, I think they will be very glad!’ said Agnes, somewhat breathless. She did not want him to know that she had as much as remarked his absence; and yet, in spite of herself, there was a slight tone of coldness and offence in her voice.
‘May I ask you to arrange it for me? I don’t know when she will be able to be moved; but when she is—summer is coming on, and the weather is quite genial already.’ (The weather is quite genial generally, one time or other, in April, to take the unwary in.)
‘Oh, yes,’ said Agnes again, assenting out of sheer timidity and embarrassment. Then she said, hesitating a little, ‘Perhaps it would be better to send word to the Sister Superior yourself.’
‘Is it necessary? I have been in great trouble lately, which is why I could not ask for poor Emmy last week,’ he said; and so managed as that the deep hatband should catch the eye of Agnes. Her face softened at once, as he saw, and her eyes, after a momentary glance at the hatband, returned inquiring and kind, not furtive or offended, to his face.
‘I am very sorry,’ she said, looking again at the hat, and in an eager, half-apologetic tone. ‘I will speak of it, if you wish. It is very kind of you to think of her—very kind.’
‘Kind! How can I be sufficiently grateful to Emmy?’ he said, low and quickly, in a tone which the child could not hear; and then he took the little girl’s thin small hand into his, and folded the fingers on a gold coin.
‘This is to hire donkeys on the sands, Emmy,’ he said, ‘but mind you must tell me all about it when you come back.’
‘Oh, sir! Oh, Miss Burchell! look what he has given me,’ said the child in ecstasy. But Oswald knew how to beat a retreat gracefully. He gave a little squeeze to Emmy’s fist, keeping it closed over the sovereign, and, bowing to Agnes, went away.
Was that the last of him? Better, far better, that it should be the last of him, poor Agnes felt, as her heart contracted, in spite of herself, at his withdrawal; but the surprise, and that pang of disappointment, which she would have gone to the stake rather than acknowledge, made her incapable of speech for the moment. It is very wicked and wrong to speak to a gentleman to whom you have never been introduced; but, then, when that gentleman has a legitimate opportunity of making a little acquaintance in a natural way, how strange, and rather injurious, that he should not take advantage of it! This failure of all necessity for resistance at the moment when she was buckling on her best armour to resist, gave an extraordinary twist to Agnes Burchell’s heart. It almost would have brought the tears to her eyes, had not she started in instant self-despair—though she would not have shed such tears for all the treasures of the world.
‘Oh, look what he has given me!’ cried little Emmy, ‘a sovereign, a whole sovereign—all to myself!’