‘Is it a message from----’ She paused, and a wave of scarlet came over her face up to her hair. Poor Charley Ashley! There was no want of the power to divine now. His little pleasant spitefulness, and his elation over what he considered her indifference, died in the twinkling of an eye.
‘It is more than a message,’ he said, thinking what an ass he was to doubt her, and what a traitor to be delighted by that doubt. ‘It is--a letter, Anne.’
She did not say anything--the colour grew deeper and deeper upon her face, the breath came quickly from her parted lips, and without a word she put out her hand.
Yes, of course, that was all--to give it her, and be done with it--what had he to do more with the incident? No honourable man would have wished to know more. To give it to her and to withdraw. It was nothing to him what was in the letter. He had no right to criticise. In the little bitterness which this feeling produced in him he wanted to say what, indeed, he had felt all along: that though he did not mind _once_, it would not suit his office to be the channel through which their communications were to flow. He _wanted_ to say this now, whereas before he had only felt that he ought to say it; but in either case, under the look of Anne’s eyes, poor Charley could not say it. He put his hand in his pocket to get the letter, and of course he forgot in which pocket he had put it, and then became red and confused, as was natural. Anne for her part did not change her attitude. She stood with that look of sudden eagerness in her face--a blush that went away, leaving her quite pale, and then came back again--and her hand held out for the letter. How hot, how wretched he got, as he plunged into one pocket after another, with her eyes looking him through! ‘Anne,’ he stammered, when he found it at last, ‘I beg your pardon--I am very glad--to be of--any use. I like to do anything, anything for you! but--I am a clergyman----’
‘Oh, go away--please go away,’ said Anne. She had evidently paid no attention to what he said. She put him away even, unconsciously, with her hand. ‘Don’t let anyone come,’ she said, walking away from him round the next corner of the path. Then he heard her tear open the envelope. She had not paid any attention to his offer of service, but she had made use of it all the same, taking it for granted. The curate turned his back to her and walked a few steps in the other direction. She had told him not to let anyone come, and he would not let anyone come. He would have walked any intruders backward out of the sacred seclusion. Yet there he stood dumbfoundered, wounded, wondering why it was that Cosmo should have so much power and he so little. Cosmo got everything he wanted. To think that Anne’s face should change like that at his mere name, nay, at the merest suggestion of him!--it was wonderful. But it was hard too.