"Do you take your meals with these people?"
Rotha nodded. "And in their kitchen. It is the only place."
"But they are not—What are they?"
"Not what you would call refined persons," said Rotha, while again the laugh of amusement and pleasure in her eyes shone through an iris of sudden tears. "No—they have been kind to me, though, in their way."
"As kind as their allegiance to Mrs. Busby permitted," said Mr. Southwode drily, recognizing at the same time the full beauty of this look I have tried to describe. "Well! That is over. How early to-morrow will you be ready to come away?"
"To come away?" repeated Rotha. "For a drive, you mean?"
"For a drive from this place. It is not my purpose ever to bring you back again."
The colour darted vividly into Rotha's cheeks, and a corresponding flash came to her eye. Yet she stood still and silent, while the colour went and came. Never here again? Then whither? and under what guardianship? His own? There came a great heart leap of joy at this suggestion, but with it came also a vague pull-back of doubt; the origin of which probably lay in words she had heard long ago and never forgotten, the tendency of which was to throw scruples in the way of such an arrangement or to cast some slur upon it. Was there an echo of them in Rotha's young consciousness? She did feel that she was a child no longer; that there was a difference since the old time. Yet she was still as simple, nearly, as a child; and of that sort of truth in her own heart which readily believes truth in others. Mr. Digby's truth she knew. Altogether there was a confusion of thoughts within her, which he saw, though he did not read.
"Do you owe anything to these people here?" he asked, a sudden question rising in his mind.
"Owe? To Mr. Purcell and his wife? No. I owe them for a good deal of kindness. O! you mean—Yes, in one sense I owe them. I have never paid them anything."