“Is there any reason why you should hesitate to own me?” he said, half sternly, yet with a smile.
This brought an overpowering flush of colour over her comely, matronly face; but the next moment she cried out with agitation, “Oh, no, no! How could you think so of me?—not for the world, not for the world! If every penny we had depended on it”—and here she stopped short, confused, and looked at him again.
“I will not meddle with your pennies, Mary, whatever you may mean by that. I have plenty. You need not fear for me. Ah!—Uncle Abraham, I suppose, is dead?—he must be dead long ago: and there is something—— The old people are all dead, I suppose?”
“It is not that,” she said, faltering, which was no answer to his question; but he understood it well enough. He looked at her with increased seriousness, and she shrank before his eye.
“Yes: they are all dead——”
“Uncle Abraham and all——” He looked at her more and more keenly, with a slight smile on his face. “But he did not take his money with him, I suppose, as he used to threaten to do?”
To this the lady made no reply; and there was a pause, he standing somewhat sternly, with his eyes fixed upon her; she with her head drooping a little, drawn back a few steps, not looking at him. The door behind her was open, and after a minute, a voice called from it, “Mary, to whom are you talking?”
The stranger started visibly. He said, with a sudden catch in his voice, “Anna! Is she here?”
“Oh yes, Leonard, yes,” said the lady. “She is here—so changed! so changed! I think it is because she has been unhappy.”
“Unhappy!” he said softly. His tone had changed and softened; only to hear it the listener might be certain that there were tears in his eyes. “Unhappy! after thirty years.”