“I am not going back yet, worse luck,” she said.
“But that is no answer. I kept looking out to-day to see if I could find any place which looked as if you might have lived there. The only place I saw like you was in Park Lane, and that, I suppose--”
“Park Lane!” she cried, with a suppressed laugh; “that was like old Crockford’s niece. I could receive all my relations then.”
“No, I told you--I am a heroine in trouble,” she said. Her laugh was perhaps a little forced, but if Walter observed that at all it only increased the interest and fascination of such a paradox as might have startled a wiser man. “And is town very empty?” she said. “But the streets will be gay and the shop windows bright because of Christmas--there is always a little movement before Christmas, and things going on. And to think that I shall see nothing--not so much as a pantomime--buried down here!”
“I thought most people came to the country for Christmas,” said Wat.
“Oh, the sw--; why shouldn’t I say it right out?--the swells you mean; but we are not swells in my place. We enjoy ourselves with all our hearts.”
“I am sorry you think it so dull in the country,” said poor Wat. “I wish you liked it better. If you had been brought up here, like me--but of course that is impossible. Perhaps when you get better used to it--”
“I shall never be used to it; I am on the outlook, don’t you know? for some one to take me back.”
“Don’t say that,” said Walter, “it hurts me so. I should like to reconcile you to this place, to make you fond of it, so that you should prefer to stay here.”
“With whom? with old Crockford?” she said.
Walter was very young, and trembled with the great flood of feeling that came over him. “Oh, if I had only a palace, a castle, anything that was good enough for you! but I have nothing--nothing you would care for. That is what makes it odious beyond description, what makes it more than I can bear.”
“Losing Penton,” cried the young man; “I told you. If Penton were still to be mine I know what I should say. It is not a cottage like Crockford’s, nor a poor muddy sort of place like the Hook. It is a house worthy even of such as you. But I am like the disinherited knight, I have nothing till I work for it.”