Page:Gaskell--A dark night's work.djvu/300

Rh The judge had been noting all down. He sat still now without replying to her. Then he wrote rapidly, referring to his previous paper, from time to time. In five minutes or so he read the facts which Ellinor had stated, as he now arranged them, in a legal and connected form. He just asked her one or two trivial questions as he did so. Then he read it over to her, and asked her to sign it. She took up the pen, and held it, hesitating.

“This will never be made public?” said she.

“No! I shall take care that no one but the Home Secretary sees it.”

“Thank you. I could not help it, now it has come to this.”

“There are not many men like Dixon,” said the judge, almost to himself, as he sealed the paper in an envelope.

“No,” said Ellinor; “I never knew any one so faithful.”

And just at the same moment the reflection on a less faithful person that these words might seem to imply struck both of them, and each instinctively glanced at the other.

“Ellinor!” said the judge, after a moment’s pause, “we are friends, I hope?”

“Yes; friends,” said she, quietly and sadly.

He felt a little chagrined at her answer. Why, he