"I said that there was a way by which you could help me to the woman I loved. And there is a way. Betty, in her note to me, will have it that you can do it at slight cost to yourself. That is for you to decide. Only remember, Sophia," Sir Hervey continued gravely, "you are free, free as air. I have kept my word to the letter. I shall continue to keep it. If there is to be a change, if we are to come nearer to one another, it must come from you, not from me."
She turned to the window; and waiting for her answer--which did not come quickly--he saw that she was shaking. "You don't help me," she whispered at last.
"What, child?"
"You don't help me. You don't make it easy for me." And then she turned abruptly to him and he saw that the tears were running down her face. "Don't you know what you ought to do?" she cried, holding out her hands and lifting her face to him. "You ought to beat me, you ought to shake me, you ought to lock me in a dark room! You ought to tell me every hour of the day how mean, how ungrateful, how poor and despicable a thing I am--to take all and give nothing!"
"And that would help you?" he said. "'Tis a new way of making love, sweet."
"'Tis an old one," she cried impetuously. "You are too good to me. But if you will take me, such as I am--and--and I suppose you have not much choice," she continued, with an odd, shy laugh, "I shall be very much obliged to you, sir. And--and I shall thank you all my life."
He would have taken her in his arms, but she dropped, as she spoke, on the bench beside the table, and hiding her face in her hands, began to weep softly--in the same posture, and in the same place, in which she had sat the day before, but with feelings how different! Ah, how different!
Sir Hervey stood over her a moment, watching her. Her riding-cap had fallen off and lay on the table beside her. Her hair, clubbed for the journey, hung undressed and without powder on her neck. He touched it gently, almost reverently with his hand. It was the first caress he had ever given her.
"Child," he whispered, "you are not unhappy?"