There came a line of faint contraction between her eyebrows, which was scarcely a frown. It may have been mere impatience, or perhaps it was dread or remorse.
"Not now," she said abruptly, withdrawing her hand and looking away to the harbour, which was wearing near. "My glove is tight; my hands feel hot and swollen this morning. Another time," and drew a quick short breath which seemed half a sob. Then turning round to him, as though she feared he might feel vexed, she added, with a doubtful smile, "There's time enough, you know. We shall be at the wharf before I could draw it on again;" and then, hurried and constrained, plunged into voluble expression of such commonplaces as occurred to her.
Joseph felt chilled, though he told himself there was no ground for feeling so. It seemed as if the first thin cloud had come between him and the sun, the sun so lately risen, in whose beams he had been warming his poor starved heart. He had little to answer to the commonplaces; they ran themselves out ere long, and both were lapsing into silence when they reached the shore.
The party of four which drove from Lippenstock was not a very talkative one; in fact, if the truth were told, all were more or less sleepy. The hour was still on the early side of noon; but when the day begins between three o'clock and four, for persons whose waking hour is seven--when those persons, instead of breaking their fast when they get up, spend hours in the keen morning air and on the water before breakfast, a heaviness supervenes, and the system of the individual makes it late in the day, however early be the time which the clock may indicate. Wilkie, as was not unnatural, began to feel the expedition something of a bore. He had not been admired so much by the ladies, or consulted by the men, as to compensate for irregular meals or hours, and indifferent repose on the open shore. Margaret had parted from Walter, and for her the pleasure was over--something to remember and think about, but all of the past. Rose was pensive and very still, though it did not appear from her behaviour of what nature were her thoughts. Joseph was yet under the influence of that chilling sensation which had fallen on him in the boat--a creeping melancholy which stole on him in spite of every consideration which good sense could suggest, the reaction perhaps from his transports of the night before. He found himself sinking into despondent broodings, from which every now and then he would awaken with a start, and tip up his horses with an unnecessary flick of the whip. How much these dumb servants have to bear from the wayward moods of their masters, and how many an unmerited cut descends upon their patient sides!