Page:Eliot - Adam Bede, vol. III, 1859.djvu/86

76 A gleam of something—it was almost like relief or joy—came across the eager anxiety of Mr Irwine's face at that moment. Adam was looking on the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak. But when he went on he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching.

"You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he said, "and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him, and had felt so ever since we were lads ". . . Mr Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam's arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice,

"No, Adam, no—don't say it, for God's sake!"

Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr Irwine's feeling, repented of the words that had passed his lips, and sat in distressed silence. The grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr Irwine threw himself back in his chair, saying, "Go on—I must know it." "That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no right to do to a girl in her