‘I am sure that Emily is very grateful,’ said Nora; ’but she would not wish to give you such trouble as that.’

‘I would do anything for your sister,’ he repeated, ’for your sake, Miss Rowley.’  This was the first time that he had ever spoken a word to her in such a strain, and it would be hardly too much to say that her heart was sick for some such expression.  But now that it had come, though there was a sweetness about it that was delicious to her, she was absolutely silenced by it.

And she was at once not only silent, but stern, rigid, and apparently cold.  Stanbury could not but feel as he looked at her that he had offended her.  ‘Perhaps I ought not to say as much,’ said he; ’but it is so.’

‘Mr Stanbury,’ said she, ’that is nonsense.  It is of my sister, not of me, that we are speaking.’

Then the door was opened and Emily came in with her child, followed by her aunt.  There was no other opportunity, and perhaps it was well for Nora and for Hugh that there should have been no other.  Enough had been said to give her comfort; and more might have led to his discomposure.  As to that matter on which he was presumed to have come to St. Diddulph’s, he could do nothing.  He did not know Trevelyan’s address, but did know that Trevelyan had abandoned the chambers in Lincoln’s Inn.  And then he found himself compelled to confess that he had quarrelled with Trevelyan, and that they had parted in anger on the day of their joint visit to the East.  ’Everybody who knows him must quarrel with him,’ said Mrs Outhouse.  Hugh when he took his leave was treated by them all as a friend who had been gained.  Mrs Outhouse was gracious to him.  Mrs Trevelyan whispered a word to him of her own trouble.  ’If I can hear anything of him, you may be sure that I will let you know,’ he said.  Then it was Nora’s turn to bid him adieu.  There was nothing to be said.  No word could be spoken before others that should be of any avail.  But as he took her hand in his he remembered the reticence of her fingers on that former day, and thought that he was sure there was a difference.

On this occasion he made his journey back to the end of Chancery Lane on the top of an omnibus; and as he lit his little pipe, disregarding altogether the scrutiny of the public, thoughts passed through his mind similar to those in which he had indulged as he sat smoking on the corner of the churchyard wall at Nuncombe Putney.  He declared to himself that he did love this girl; and as it was so, would it not be better, at any rate more manly, that he should tell her so honestly, than go on groping about with half-expressed words when he saw her, thinking of her and yet hardly daring to go near her, bidding himself to forget her although he knew that such forgetting was impossible, hankering after the sound of her voice and the touch of her hand, and something of the tenderness of returned affection and yet regarding her as a prize altogether out of his reach!  Why should she be out of his reach?  She had no money, and he had not a couple of hundred pounds in the world.  But he was earning an income which would give them both shelter and clothes and bread and cheese.