"When--to-morrow? To-morrow will be Sunday."
"Perhaps I may come to-morrow. I shall come as soon as ever I can."
They were standing at the door-step. Leigh had leaned his side against the area-railings for support. His breathing was terrible, and every now and then he gasped, and clutched his hands together.
"If you come, perhaps you may not come alone?"
Hanbury flushed. He did not want to make his confession just now.
"Perhaps I may not," he said. "Good-bye, now."
"Good-bye; and thank you for your goodness. You know whom I hope to see with you?"
With a feeling of relief, Hanbury walked rapidly away. The last words of Leigh had stirred within him once more the trouble which had made him shirk meeting his mother that morning. The burning down of Leigh's place and the destruction of the wonderful clock, and the meeting with the unfortunate clockmaker, would afford a story to be told when he got home, and he might interpose that history between the first words of meeting and the ultimate announcement that the engagement between Dora and himself was at an end.
Family considerations or desires had nothing to do with the understanding which had existed between Dora and him; but to his mother, from whom he had no secret, except that of the quarrel on Thursday night, he must explain, and explain fully too. There was no good in putting off the inevitable meeting any longer. He knew his mother had great respect and liking for Dora, but she had had nothing whatever to do with bringing about the understanding between the two of them. They had been quite as free in their choice of one another as though they had been the heroine and hero of a pastoral. He had never been a fool about Dora and she had never been a fool about him. In his life he meant to be no cypher among men; it would never do for him to be a cypher in his own home. Dora and he had acted with great reasonableness throughout their whole acquaintance, and with supreme reasonableness when they agreed to separate. If he had been an ordinary man, a man with no great public career before him, he might have been disposed to yield more to Dora's opinion or judgment; but as matters stood, any man with the smallest trace of common sense must commend Dora's decision of terminating the engagement, and his acceptance of her decision.