Hester

had to do. There were times when her indignation at the contrast between his fraternal and almost tender accost on their accidental meetings, and the way in which he held himself aloof on more public occasions, was uncontrollable; but yet there rarely occurred any of these public occasions without a meaning look, a word said in an undertone which conveyed to Hester a curious sense of secret intimacy, of having more to do with Edward’s life than any of the fine people among whom he was so much more visibly familiar. She was young enough to have her imagination excited, and kept in a state of tantalised interest by these tactics, and also to be indignant by any suggestion that this mode of treatment was not honourable on his part. Not honourable! The idea would have roused Hester into proud indignation. What was he to her that it should matter how he behaved? His blowing hot and cold, his holding off and on, which a moralist would have condemned summarily, which the gossips would have delighted in commenting upon, what was it to her? But it amused her in the meantime with a constant curiosity and frequent pique, exercising over her imagination something of the same effect which her own waywardness had upon Harry, when he declared that it drew a fellow on. When she got out of the streets, and saw before her walking slowly, as if waiting for someone, the figure of this tantalising and uncertain personage, there was a slight quickening of Hester’s pulses and flutter at her heart. He had never done anything of this kind before, and she had a feeling that he had not waited for her for nothing, but that some further revelation must be at hand.

“I saw you from my office-window,” he said. “I never saw anyone walk like you. I know you at once at any distance, even in a crowd. Do you dislike so much walking alone?”

“Why should I?” she asked quickly. “I always walk alone.”

“That is no answer. One may hate many things one has to do habitually. Your walk says that you dislike it. It says, Here am I, who ought to be guarded like a princess; but I am poor, I have no escort of honour; yet here I walk, a whole retinue, a bodyguard to myself.”

Hester’s colour changed from pale to red, and from red to pale, with mingled indignation and pleasure. It occurred to her, against her will, that Harry might have seen her pass for years without learning anything from her gait.

“I have to be my own bodyguard, it is true,” she said; “but why should I want one at all? It is folly to suppose a girl requires protection wherever she goes. Protection! who would harm me?” she cried, lighting up with an almost angry glow.

“I for one should not like to try,” said Edward, looking at her, with a look which was habitual to him when they were alone. What did it mean? A sort of contemplative regretful admiration as of a man who would like to say a great deal more than he dared say⁠—a sort of, “if I might,” “if I could,” with an element of impatience and almost anger in the regret. There was a pause, and then he resumed suddenly, and without any preface, “So it is Harry⁠—who is to be the man?”

“Harry!” Hester gasped, suddenly stopping short, as she had a way of doing when anything vexed or disturbed her. The rapidity of the attack took away her breath. Then she added, as most people, and certainly every girl naturally would add, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Who else?” said Edward, calmly. “He has his freedom and he knows how to use it. And I approve him, for my part. I am of the same opinion. It should be I, if I were he.”

It seemed to Hester that all the blood in her rushed to her throbbing cheeks and aching forehead. She stamped her foot on the ground.

“Is it of me you dare to speak so?” she cried. “Oh, I understand you! When one has been brought up among the Vernons, one knows what things mean. You venture to tell me that Harry is the man!⁠—who else?⁠—but that you would have been so had you been free⁠—the man,” cried the girl with blazing eyes, that smote him with lightnings not of a harmless kind, “to pick up out of the dust⁠—me!⁠—like something on the roadside.”

“You are very eloquent, my little cousin,” said Edward, “not that there is very much in what you say; but your looks and gesture are as fine as ever I saw. After all though, is it called for? When I say that Harry is the man, I do not suppose either that he is worthy of you, or that you think so; but you are a girl, what can you do? They would not let you work, and if you could work, nothing but daily bread would come of it. And, my dear Hester, you want a great deal more than daily bread. You want triumph, power; you want to be as you are by nature, somebody. Oh, yes,” he said, going on quietly, waving his hand to avert the angry interruption which was on her lips; “believe me it is so, even if you don’t know it. And how can you do this, save by marrying? It does not make anything worse to recognise its real character. You must do this by marrying. Harry is the first man who offers. If you were to wait a little longer you might do better; but you do not feel that you can wait. I do not blame you. I should do the same were I you.”

All this was said very quietly, the speaker going on by her side with his eyes turned to the ground, swinging his stick in a meditative way. The soft measure of his voice, with little pauses as if to