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in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. Theres one thing, of courseit occurs to meto remember. My letter, giving the alarm, will have reached town before you. I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and how weary at last it had made her. Your letter wont have got there. Your letter never went. What then became of it? Goodness knows! Master Miles Do you mean he took it? I gasped. She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. I mean that I saw yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasnt where you had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it. We could only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated You see! Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it and destroyed it. And dont you see anything else? I faced her a moment with a sad smile. It strikes me that by this time your eyes are open even wider than mine. They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show it. I make out now what he must have done at school. And she gave, in her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. He stole! I turned it overI tried to be more judicial. Wellperhaps. She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. He stole letters! She couldnt know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so I showed them off as I might. I hope then it was to more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday, I pursued, will have given him so scant an advantagefor it contained only the bare demand for an interviewthat he is already much ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had on his mind last evening was precisely the need of confession. I seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. Leave us, leave usI was already, at the door, hurrying her off. Ill get it out of him. Hell meet mehell confess. If he confesses, hes saved. And if hes saved Then you are? The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her farewell. Ill save you without him! she cried as she went. |
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