“Done anything fresh!” he repeated, trying to give an accent of lightness to the repetition of her fear. “Nothing beyond being more delightfully kind and helpful and spoiling to us with every week you have given us.” (Miss Ransome’s brow did not clear. Edward was not in the habit of complimenting her, and instinct told her that the enumeration of her merits had something ominous in it. He was leaning against a tree-trunk, and she noticed that there was a false nonchalance in the way in which he was stirring the dead leaves with his stick, and that he did not look at her, as he added a finishing clause to his civilities.) “But we cannot be so selfish as to hope to keep you always to ourselves!”
It was such a bolt out of the blue, that no wonder if a sort of darkness settled on Bonnybell’s vision. “I am bound to go to the dogs if they kick me out, as they are going to do,” she said to herself crudely, “and I shall have no more Sunday walks.” The collocation of two future events of such unequal consequence had something ludicrous in it, but for the moment the misfortunes prophesied counted to her as about equal.
“It has been wonderfully good of you to put up with me so long,” she said after a pause; and even in this crisis of feeling she could not help thinking how infinitely better the natural tremble in her voice was than any of the many artificial ones she had executed. Its success was, as she at once felt, proportionate to its superiority. Edward forgot himself just a little.
“Put up with,” he repeated, in a key of low emphasis—“put up with sunshine and wonderful temper and tact! Has it been so great a credit to us to put up with these?”
Her quick ear caught the plural pronoun, and set her wondering whether Mr. Tancred was joining his old wife with him only for the sake of euphony? or, if her opinion of the temper and tact alluded to, and which she had put to the test so very much more severely than he had ever done, was as high as his, why this imminent expulsion?
His voice, recovered and recontrolled, broke upon her anxious speculation.
“But because you have been infinitely good and forbearing to a cranky old couple is no reason why they should stand in your light!”
She could not even compass another tremble now, it would have broken into a sob, and it was too soon, as the tact he had praised taught her, to use that ultimate weapon. But something of the blank cold wonder that was icing her heart sat in her desolate orphan eyes as they looked in meek expectancy of her doom at him who had taken upon himself to pronounce it.
“I am making a stupid bungle,” he said, averting his own eyes. If he did not fix them on some other object, he should have to close them, so unendurable to him was the sight of her little darkened face, unalterably sweet in its expectation of an imminent blow. “I am going on the supposition that you know what I am talking about, which of course you cannot do. Camilla has not yet had an opportunity of telling you, but this morning she received an invitation for you which she does not think it fair to you to refuse.”
No assenting comment.