Clement said nothing of this to the Squire, though the scene had been painful, and though he felt that something was due to him, were it but a word of thanks, or an expression of acknowledgment. It had not been his fault or his father’s, that the money had been taken; it was through him that the greater part of it had been recovered, and now reposed safe in the Squire’s pocket or in the bags at his feet.
At the least, it seemed to him, the old man might remember that his father was alone and needing him—was facing trouble, and, it might be, ruin. He took up his hat. “Well, sir, that’s all,” he said curtly. “I must go now.”
“Wait!” said the Squire. “And ring the bell, if you please.”
Clement stepped to the hearth, and pulled the faded drab cord, which once had been blue, that hung near it. The bell in the passage had hardly tinkled before Calamy entered. “Bid your mistress come here,” said the old man. “Where is she? Fetch her?”
The blood mounted to Clement’s face, and his pulses began to throb, his ideas to tumble over one another. The old man, who sat before him, his hands on his stick, stubbornly confronting the darkness, the old man, whom he had thought insensible, took on another hue, became instead inscrutable, puzzling, perplexing. Why had he sent for his daughter? What was in his mind? What was he going to say? What had he—but even while Clement wondered, his thoughts in a whirl, strange hopes jostling one another in his brain, the door opened, and Josina came in.
She came in with a timid step, but as soon as her eyes met Clement’s, the color rose vividly to her cheeks, then left her pale. Her lip trembled. But her look—fleeting as it was and immediately diverted to her father—how he blessed her for that look! For it bade him take confidence, it bade him have no fear, it bade him trust her. Silently and incredibly, it took him under her protection, it pledged her faith to him.
And how it changed all for him! How it quelled, in a moment, the disappointment and anger he was feeling, ay, and even the vague hopes which the Squire’s action in summoning her had roused in him! How it gave calmness and assurance where his aspirations had been at best to the extravagant and the impossible.
But, whatever his feelings, to whatever lover’s heaven that look raised him, he was speedily brought to earth again. The old man had proved himself thankless; now, as if he were determined to show himself in the worst light, he proceeded to prove himself suspicious. “Come here, girl,” he said, “and count these notes.” Fumbling, he took the parcel from his pocket and handed it to her. “Ha’ you got them? Then count them! D’you hear, wench? Count them! And have a care to make no mistake! Lay ’em in piles o’ ten. They are hundreds, are they? Hundreds, eh?”
She untied the parcel, and brought all her faculties to bear on the task, though her fingers trembled, and the color, rising and ebbing in her cheeks, betrayed her consciousness that her lover’s eyes were upon her. “Yes, sir, they are hundred-pound notes,” she said.
“All?”