"Oh no: I see. It can't do any harm."
"And now I'll be off," laughed Sissy. "How dreadfully I have made you waste your time! I dare say if I hadn't been here you would have written ever so many things on parchment and tied them up with red tape."
"Oh yes, quantities!" Hardwicke replied as he escorted her to the door. "A cartload at least. I'm glad you think I'm so industrious."
Standing outside, he said something about her horse. He did not like Firefly's look, and he told her so. Moreover, he threatened to tell Mrs. Middleton his bad opinion of Sissy's favorite.
"Nonsense!" she answered lightly. "There's nothing to be afraid of." But suddenly she turned and looked at him. "Don't you really think Firefly is safe?" she said. "Well, I must see about it.—William, I'm not going back now, and I think I'll walk to Mrs. Elliott's. You had better meet me here at half-past two."
And with a parting glance at Hardwicke she went away down the sunshiny street, and he stood looking after her. He would have liked to be her escort to the Elliotts' house, but he had her message to deliver to his father, and he knew she would not permit it. Besides, to tell the truth, she had taken him by surprise, and gone away before he thought of anything of the kind. So he could only stand bareheaded on the office-steps watching her as she went on her way. But suddenly his lips parted to let out a word, which certainly would not have escaped him had he been by Sissy's side. "There's that Fothergill fellow!" said Henry, recognizing the captain's slim figure and black moustache. And he turned on his heel and went in.
He was quite right. It was Fothergill who came sauntering along the pavement, looking at the shop-windows, at the passers-by, at the preparations for the market, with quick eyes and an interest which conveyed the impression of his superiority to it all better than any affectation of languid indifference. His glances seemed to say, "And this is a country town—a market—these are farmers—people live here all their lives!" But when he saw Sissy Langton he came forward eagerly. And perhaps it was just as well that he was at hand to be her squire through the busy little street, for the girl was seized with a new and unaccountable nervousness. A bit of orange-peel lying in the road caused her a sudden tremor. Two or three meek and wondering cows, which gazed vacantly round in search of their familiar pasture, appeared to her as a herd of savage brutes. She looked distrustfully up and down the road, and waited at the pavement's edge for a donkey-cart to pass before she dared attempt a crossing. It was just at this moment that the captain appeared, quickening his pace and lifting his hat, only too ready to guard her through all the perils of a Fordborough market-day.
Henry Hardwicke hated reading, and had no particular love for the law. His father said he was a fool, and was inordinately fond of him nevertheless. It might be that the old lawyer was right on both points. And, dull as Henry was supposed to be, he was capable of delicate feelings and perceptions as far as Sissy Langton was concerned. It seemed to him that accident had revealed to him a hidden wound in her heart; and the revelation pained him—not selfishly, for he had never hoped for himself, but because of the secret suffering which it implied. His one idea was to do her bidding, yet not betray her. He delivered her message to his father with a tact of which he was himself unconscious. On his lips it became no less urgent, but he dwelt especially on Sissy's desire to see justice done to the man who had been accidentally disinherited; on her feeling that she owed more to the Thornes, whose home and love she had shared, than to the Langtons, with whom she shared nothing but a name; and on her impatience of even an hour's delay, because the squire's sudden death had made a deep impression on her mind. All this, translated into Harry's blunt and simple speech, was intelligible enough to Mr. Hardwicke. The girlish whim that all should be done on her birthday made him smile, but the remembrance of Godfrey Thorne was present in his mind as in hers. He did not attach much importance to the whole affair, and felt that he should not be overwhelmed with surprise should he hear a few months later that Sissy was going to be married to some one else, and wanted to make some compromise—perhaps to resign the squire's legacy to Percival. To his eyes it looked more like an attempt at restitution than anything else. "She is sorry for him, poor fellow!" thought Mr. Hardwicke. "She did not know her own mind, and now she would like to atone to him somehow."
Sissy came back alone at the time she had fixed, looking white and anxious. A client came out as she arrived, and five farmers were waiting in the office to see Mr. Hardwicke: therefore, though she was ushered in at once, the interview was brief. The old lawyer paid her a smiling compliment on her promptitude. "We have to advise people to make their wills sometimes," he said, "but you are beforehand with us." Sissy expressed a fear that she had troubled him on a very busy day, and he assured her that to blame her because her twenty-first birthday happened to fall on a Friday would be the last thing he should think of doing. Then the girl looked up at him, and said that old Mr. Thorne had always been so good to her, and she thought that perhaps if he could see he would be glad, so she could not put it off. She stopped abruptly, and her eyes filled. Mr. Hardwicke bent his head in silent acquiescence, the brief document was duly signed and witnessed, and Sissy went away, riding home as if she had never known what fear meant. Suppose Firefly threw her, what then? She had been to Mr. Hardwicke, and though her "Cecilia Jane Langton" was not all she could have wished, because she was nervous and Mr. Hardwicke's pen was so scratchy, still there it was. And was not the paper, thus signed, a talisman against all dread of death?
So her burden was lighter. But what could lighten the other load which lay on her heart? She hardly knew whether it were love or fear that she felt for Percival. The long days which had passed since she saw him had only deepened the impression of that summer evening when they parted. His reply to her entreaty that he would come back to her had been exactly what she had feared—as gentle as he himself had been when they stood face to face in the old drawing-room at Brackenhill, and as inflexible. If she could forget him—if she could learn to care for Captain Fothergill or Walter Latimer—what a bright, easy, sunshiny life might yet be hers! No, ten thousand times, no! Better to suffer the weariness of dread and doubt and longing for Percival.