"Do you take sugar and milk, Mr. Ray?" said she.
"Dear me, Hetty," said her brother, "what a lot you have to learn yet!"
She coloured violently, and shook her head at him.
"I wish you would sit down, Alfred. You are keeping all the light out of the room; I can't see what I'm doing."
"No," said he, looking meaningly from her to Ray; "but, bad as the light is, I can see what you have done."
At this Hetty and Ray laughed a suppressed laugh, and looked at one another with joyous glances.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
[CRAWFORD WRITES HOME.]
The morning after Mrs. Crawford's relapse and Crawford's visit to town about the three thousand pounds, the husband was sitting by his wife's bedside. He was in a particularly cheerful and hopeful humour, and insisted that she had already begun to mend, and would in a week be better than she had been for months.
She shook her head with a sad smile, but said nothing. She did not wish to sadden the being she loved above all other living creatures by the thought of a final separation between them, a separation which she felt was inevitable, and to which she could not reconcile her mind. When alone she would cry out in despair to her gentle heart, "To be so loved, and to be so loving, and to be separated so soon!"