“I want no present, sir; your friendly words are quite enough.”
“Nonsense! I should like to give you some of the sketches I have made of the village.”
“To me! give them to me?” said Dora, with wide-open eyes. “Why, Mr. Hetherington, I thought you wanted them to—to———-”
“To—what?”
“Well, to remind you of this visit!”
“Perhaps when I began them I had some notion of that kind in my head; we are all fools sometimes, you know. But I have changed my mind; I don’t want to be reminded of this visit. Yes, I shall give you the sketches—that is to say, if you will accept them; and when I have taken my departure—and I shall do so soon—I shall try to forget that such a village as Omberley ever existed at all.”
“And the people,” said Dora; “of course you will try to forget the people?”
“That is the first thing I shall try to do!”
We are most of us selfish in our grief, and Walter was no exception to the rule. Mortified and suffering himself, it never once entered his head that he might be unpolite, and even rude, to another. But the knife entered Dora’s little heart, and made her wince. She had been happy in the knowledge that she had met a fellow-creature who could treat her exactly as an equal—a man whom she could call a friend; and lo! when her interest is strongest, when she has been telling herself that the memory of the few days which he has brightened for ever will linger in her memory and never die, he came to tell her that his first effort would be to forget the place—and her.
“I will take the pictures, if you like, Mr. Hetherington, but merely as a loan. You will change your mind again.. I am convinced that some day you will ask me for them back again, and when you do they shall certainly be yours. But the sketch of the cottage—is it finished already?”