“That is true,” replied the other, sobbing; “but when you are down upon me I know that it is for my good. Unworthy and wretched as I am, I have always known that you did not really hate me, since that night when you came up to my bedroom and kissed me when you thought I was asleep.”
Bonnybell’s wet eyes were cast down, but she heard her benefactress give a start at this masterly communication.
“It was of a piece with the rest of your conduct to pretend that you were asleep,” she said harshly.
But the poor innocent knew that her shot had told.
CHAPTER XXI
A steady fine rain had set in, which had lasted with scarcely any daylight intermission, though, as often in wet weather, the nights were fine, since Bonnybell’s absorption into the bosom of her future family. Three days had passed since that event, and from inside the walls of her prison-house had come no sign of how things were going with her there. Sometimes Edward felt Darius’s wish to go to the edge of the lion’s den and cry out “in a lamentable voice” to a little modern Daniel to know how she was faring there. The only difference was that he did not indulge it.
Mr. Tancred had returned to find his guest already gone, and told himself at once that he was relieved. That there might be no mistake about it, he repeated the statement several times.
“She is absolutely indifferent to the young man,” Camilla said, using the generic term for humanity instead of the colloquial, on the same principle as she always spoke of Jock as “the dog” when he was in disgrace. “She went off in a flood of tears.”
“With such an ordeal before me, I think I should have done the same,” he answered.
“I reminded her that she would have the support of her accomplice; but that did not seem to give her much confidence.”