No answer.
Thinking that the wind has carried away his words, he repeats his question: "At the end of three weeks you will come to us, then?"
She turns her head round slowly. "Could not I live in some hovel by myself?"
He shakes his head. "Impossible! You see," he says, speaking with slow reluctance, "he—poor dear fellow!—laid out a great deal of money on all the latest improvements in farming implements, and things of that kind, and they did not bring him anything back; they would have done, no doubt, if he had been given time," he adds, quickly, afraid of seeming to cast the faintest slur upon the dead boy.
"You mean to say that I have no money—that I am a beggar," she says, fixing her clear, steadfast eyes upon him: and in them is none of that dismay which her words seem to imply.
"I mean to say," he answers, heartily, "that henceforth you are to be one of us, and that we are very, very glad of it."
She does not say "Thank you;" she neither assents nor refuses; she only looks away, and watches the distant trees tossing violent arms, in riotous fight with the wind.
Something in her manner makes Brandon uneasy. "It is agreed, then?" he asks, eagerly.
No reply.
"Why don't you answer me, Esther?" (with a slight natural impatience in his tone).