“Girls _will_ talk, though,” said he, doubtingly.
“There is the double security here--they have no one to talk to,” she said, with a faint smile.
“Very true. I was forgetting how retired your life was here. Now for the next point. What are you to tell them--I mean, how much are they to know?”
The old lady looked puzzled; she felt she might easily have replied, “If they only know no more than I can tell them, your secret will certainly be safe;” but, as she looked at his haggard cheek and feverish eye, she shrunk from renewing a theme full of distress and suffering. “Leave it to me to say something--anything which shall show them that you are in a serious trouble, and require all their secrecy and sympathy.”
“Yes, that may do--at least for the present. It will do at least with Emily, who bears me no ill will.”
“You wrong Florence if you imagine that _she_ does. It was only the other day, when, in a letter from Loyd, she read that you had left the army, she said how sorry she was you had quitted the career so suited to your abilities.”
“Indeed! I scarce hoped for so much of interest in me.”
“Oh, she talks continually about you; and always as of one, who only needs the guidance of some true friend to be a man of mark and distinction yet.”
“It is very good, very kind of her,” he said; and, for an instant, seemed lost in thought.
“I’ll go back now,” said Miss Grainger, “and prepare them for your coming. They’ll wonder what has detained me all this while. Wait one moment for me here.”
Calvert, apparently, was too much engaged with his own thoughts to hear her, and suffered her to go without a word. She was quickly back again, and beckoning him to follow her, led the way to the drawing-room.
Scarcely had Calvert passed the doorway, when the two girls met him, and each taking a hand, conducted him without a word to a sofa. Indeed, his sickly look, and the air of downright misery in his countenance, called or all their sympathy and kindness.
“I have scarcely strength to thank you!” he said to them, in a faint voice. Though the words were addressed to both, the glance he gave towards Florence sent the blood to her pale cheeks, and made her turn away in some confusion.
“You’ll have some tea and rest yourself, and when you feel once quiet and undisturbed here you’ll soon regain your strength,” said Emily, as she turned towards the tea-table. While Florence, after a few moments’ hesitation, seated herself on the sofa beside him.