Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/163

Rh day after my interview with Mrs. Graham, he happened to be from home—a circumstance by no means so agreeable to me now as it had been on former occasions. Miss Millward was there, it is true, but she, of course, would be little better than a non-entity. However, I resolved to make my visit a short one, and to talk to Eliza in a brotherly, friendly sort of way, such as our long acquaintance might warrant me in assuming, and which, I thought, could neither give offence nor serve to encourage false hopes.

It was never my custom to talk about Mrs. Graham either to her or any one else; but I had not been seated three minutes, before she brought that lady on to the carpet herself, in a rather remarkable manner.

"Oh, Mr. Markham!", said she, with a shocked expression and voice subdued almost to a whisper—"what do you think of these shocking reports about Mrs. Graham?—can you encourage us to disbelieve them?"

"What reports?"