While these reasonings went on in his mind, his heart dropped down again into its right place; his pulse ceased to beat like the pistons of a steam-engine; he came gradually to himself. After all, what was it? Not such a great matter; a loan of something which would neither enrich him who took, nor impoverish him who, without being aware of it, should give—a nothing! Why people should entertain the prejudices they did on the subject, it was difficult to see, though, perhaps, he allowed candidly to himself, it might be dangerous for any ignorant man to follow the same strain of thinking; but in the hands of a man who was not ignorant, who knew, as he himself did, exactly how far to go, and what might be innocently done; innocently done—in his own mind he put a great stress on this—why, what was it? A thing which might be of use in an emergency, and which was absolutely no harm.
Mr. May was late in leaving his room that night. It was understood in the family that he “was writing,” and all was kept very quiet in the house; yet not sufficiently quiet, for Janey, when she brought in the coffee, placing it on the table close to the door, was startled by the fierceness of the exclamation with which her father greeted her entrance.
“What do you want prying here?” he said, dropping his hand over the writing.
“Prying himself!” said Janey, furiously, when she was up again in the cheerful light of the drawing-room; “a great deal there is to pry into in that dreadful old study.”
“Hush! he never likes to be disturbed in his writing,” said Ursula, soothingly.
And he sat at his “writing” to a much later hour than usual, and he stumbled upstairs to his bed-room in the dead of the night, with the same scared pale face which he had seen in the glass. Such a look as that when it once comes upon a man's face takes a long time to glide away; but his heart beat more tranquilly, and the blood flowed even in his veins. After all, where was the harm?