Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/231

 as—oh, Grandy! Grandy! what am I saying? I have pained you."

Waife indeed was striving hard to keep down emotion; but his lips were set firmly and the blood had left them, and his hands were trembling.

"We must, hide ourselves," he said in a very low voice; "we must take false names; I—because—because of reasons I can't tell even to you; and you, because I failed to get you a proper home, where you ought to be; and there is one who, if he pleases, and he may please it any day, could take you away from me, if he found you out; and so—and so—" He paused abruptly, looked at her fearful wondering soft face, and, rising, drew himself up with one of those rare outbreaks of dignity which elevated the whole character of his person. "But as for me," said he, "if I have lost all name; if, while I live, I must be this wandering, skulking outcast,—look above, Sophy,—look up above: there all secrets will be known, all hearts read; and there my best hope to find a place in which I may wait your coming is in what has lost me all birthright here. Not to exalt myself do I say this,—no; but that you may have comfort, darling, if ever hereafter you are pained by what men say to you of me."

As he spoke, the expression of his face, at first solemn and lofty, relaxed into melancholy submission. Then passing his arm into hers, and leaning on it as if sunk once more into the broken cripple needing her frail support, he drew her forth from the arbour, and paced the little garden slowly, painfully. At length he seemed to recover himself, and said in his ordinary cheerful tone, "But to the point in question, suppose we have done with acting and roaming, and keep to one name and settle somewhere like plain folks, again I ask, How shall we live?"

"I have been thinking of that," answered Sophy. "You remember that those good Miss Burtons taught me all kinds of needlework, and I know people can make money by needlework. And then, Grandy dear, what can't you do? Do you forget Mrs. Saunders's books that you bound, and her cups and saucers that you mended? So we would both work, and have a little cottage and a garden, that we could take care of, and sell the herbs and vegetables. Oh, I have thought over it all, the last fortnight, a hundred hundred times, only I did not dare to speak first."

Waife listened very attentively. "I can make very good baskets," said he, rubbing his chin, "famous baskets (if one