Helstone is with company, and then he will go away.” Oh! she cannot let him go: in spite of herself—in spite of her reason she walks half across the room; she stands ready to dart out in case the step should retreat: but he enters the passage. “Since your master is engaged,” he says, “just show me into the dining-room; bring me pen and ink: I will write a short note and leave it for him.”
Now, having caught these words, and hearing him advance, Caroline, if there was a door within the dining-room, would glide through it and disappear. She feels caught, hemmed in; she dreads her unexpected presence may annoy him. A second since, she would have flown to him; that second passed, she would flee from him. She cannot; there is no way of escape: the dining-room has but one door, through which now enters her cousin. The look of troubled surprise she expected to see in his face has appeared there, has shocked her, and is gone. She has stammered a sort of apology:—
“I only left the drawing-room a minute for a little quiet.”
There was something so diffident and downcast in the air and tone with which she said this, any one might perceive that some saddening change had lately passed over her prospects, and that the faculty of cheerful self-possession had left her. Mr. Moore, probably, remembered how she had formerly been accustomed to meet him with gentle ardour and hopeful confidence; he must have seen how the
