Percival put the money in her hand. She eyed it discontentedly.
"That's right, isn't it?" he asked in some surprise.
The touch of the coins recalled to her the pleasure with which she had spent her own three-and-sixpence to brighten his room, and she half repented. "Oh, it's right enough," she said. "But I don't know why you should pay for it. Things will get knocked over--"
"I beg your pardon: of course I ought to pay for it," he replied, drawing himself up. He spoke the more decidedly that he knew how it was broken. "But, Miss Bryant, it will not be necessary to replace it. I don't think anything of the kind would be very safe in the middle of my table." And with a bow he went on his way.
Lydia stood where he had left her, fingering his half-crown and shilling with an uneasy sense that there was something very mean about the transaction. Now that she had taken his money she disliked him much more, but, as she _had_ taken it, she went away and bought herself a pair of grass-green gloves. From that time forward she always openly declared that she despised Mr. Thorne.
That evening, when they came back from their walk, Lisle asked his companion to lend him a couple of sovereigns. "You shall have them back to-morrow," he said airily. Percival assented as a matter of course. He hardly thought about it at all, and if he had he would have supposed that there was something to be paid in Miss Lisle's absence. He had still something left of the small fortune with which he had started. It was very little, but he could manage Bertie's two sovereigns with that and the money he had laid aside for Mrs. Bryant's weekly bill.
Percival Thorne, always exact in his accounts, supposed that a time was fixed for the repayment of the loan. He did not understand that his debtor was one of those people who when they say "I will pay you to-morrow," merely mean "I will not pay you to-day."
Percival had announced the fact of the Lisles' presence in Bellevue street to Sissy in a carefully careless sentence. Sissy read it, and shivered sadly. Then she answered in a peculiarly bright and cheerful letter. "I'm not fit for him," she thought as she wrote it. "I don't understand him, and I'm always afraid. Even when he loved me best I felt as if he loved some dream-girl and took me for her in his dream, and would be angry with me when he woke. Miss Lisle would not be afraid. It is the least I can do for Percival, not to stand in the way of his happiness--the least I can do, and oh, how much the hardest!" So she gave Thorne to understand that she was getting on remarkably well.