"Oh, Mr. Morton, how you have startled me!"
"Is there anything the matter, Mary?" said he, looking up into her
face.
"Only you have startled me so."
"Has that brought tears into your eyes."
"Well,--I suppose so," she said trying to smile. "You were so very
quiet and I thought you were in London."
"So I was this morning, and now I am here. But something else has
made you unhappy."
"No; nothing."
"I wish we could be friends, Mary. I wish I could know your secret.
You have a secret."
"No," she said boldly.
"Is there nothing?"
"What should there be, Mr. Morton!"
"Tell me why you were crying."
"I was not crying. Just a tear is not crying. Sometimes one does
get melancholy. One can't cry when there is any one to look, and so
one does it alone. I'd have been laughing if I knew that you were
coming."
"Come round by the kennels. You can get over the wall;--can't you?"
"Oh yes."
"And we'll go down the old orchard, and get out by the corner of
the park fence." Then he walked and she followed him, hardly
keeping close by his side, and thinking as she went how foolish she
had been not to have avoided the perils and fresh troubles of such
a walk. When he was helping her over the wall he held her hands for
a moment and she was aware of unusual pressure. It was the pressure
of love,--or of that pretence of love which young men, and perhaps
old men, sometimes permit themselves to affect.
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