You have said enough to sanction my
taking the best possible care of your interests, and we can settle
details at another opportunity. Let us have done with business
now, and talk of something else."
I led her at once into speaking on other topics. In ten minutes'
time she was in better spirits, and I rose to take my leave.
"Come here again," she said earnestly. "I will try to be worthier
of your kind feeling for me and for my interests if you will only
come again."
Still clinging to the past--that past which I represented to her,
in my way, as Miss Halcombe did in hers! It troubled me sorely to
see her looking back, at the beginning of her career, just as I
look back at the end of mine.
"If I do come again, I hope I shall find you better," I said;
"better and happier. God bless you, my dear!"
She only answered by putting up her cheek to me to be kissed.
Even lawyers have hearts, and mine ached a little as I took leave
of her.
The whole interview between us had hardly lasted more than half an
hour--she had not breathed a word, in my presence, to explain the
mystery of her evident distress and dismay at the prospect of her
marriage, and yet she had contrived to win me over to her side of
the question, I neither knew how nor why.
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