“If it comes to that, I have to thank you.”
I had almost reached the threshold when her words made me turn.
“Well, then, why shouldn’t you come back later—in some more usual manner—and let me see if there isn’t something I could do for you?”
“In the way of getting you work—or something.”
My heart had leaped up for a minute, but now it fell. Why it should have done either I cannot say, since I could be nothing to her but a fool who had tried to be a thief, and couldn’t, as we say in our common idiom, get away with it.
“But you’ve done a great deal for me as it is,” I added. “I couldn’t ask for more.” Somewhat disconnectedly I continued, “I think you’re the pluckiest girl I ever saw not to have been afraid of me.”
“Oh, it wasn’t pluck. I saw at once that you wouldn’t do me any harm.”
“In general. I was surprised. I was excited. In a way I was overcome. But I wasn’t afraid of you. If you’d been a tramp or a colored man or anything like that it would have been different. But one isn’t afraid of a—of a gentleman.”
“Well then, a man who has a gentleman’s traditions. You’d better go now,” she whispered, suddenly. “If you want to come back as I’ve suggested—any time to-morrow forenoon—I’d speak to my father—”
“Not about this?” I whispered, hurriedly.
“No, not about this. This had better be just between ourselves. I shall never say anything to any one about it, and I advise you to do the same.” I had made a low bow, preparatory to getting out, when she held up the scrap of paper she had crumpled in her hand. “Why did you write this?”
But I got out of the room without giving a reply.
I was descending the back stairs when I heard a door open on the third floor and Elsie’s voice call out, “Regina, are you talking to anybody down there?”
There was a tremor in the mezzo as it replied: “N-no. I’m just—I’m just moving about.”
“Well, for Heaven’s sake go to bed! It’s after two o’clock. I never was in a house like this in all my life before. It seems to be full of people crawling round everywhere. I think I’ll come down to your mother’s bed, after all.”
“Do,” was the only word I heard as I stole into the servants’ dining-room, then into the closet with shelves, where I shut the door softly. A few seconds later I was out on the cool ground, in the dark, behind the shrub.