38
WYLDER'S HAJVD.
111 should not like to touch it, dear Radie. And pray
how do you amuse yourself here? How on earth do you
get over the day, and, worse still, the evenings?"
"Very well — well enough. I make a very good sort
of a nun, and a capital housemaid. I work in the gar-
den, I mend my dresses, I drink tea,, and when I choose
to be dissipated, I play and sing for old Tamar — why did
not you ask how she is? I do believe, Stanley, you care
for no one, but" (she was going to say yourself, she said
instead, however, but) "perhaps, the least in the world
for me, and that not very wisely," she continued, a little
fiercely, "for from the moment you saw me, you've done
little else than try to disgust me more than I am with my
penury and solitude. What do you mean? You always
have a purpose—will you ever learn to be frank and
straightforward, and speak plainly to those whom you
ought to trust, if not to love? What are you driving at,
Stanley?"
He looked up with a gentle start, like one recovering
from a reverie, and said, with his yellow eyes fixed for a
moment on his sister, before they dropped again to the
carpet,
"You're miserably poor, Rachel: upon my word, I
believe you haven't clear two hundred a year. I'll drink
some tea, please, if you have got any, and it isn't too much
trouble; and it strikes me as very curious you like living
in this really very humiliating state."
"I don't intend to go out for a governess, if that's what
you mean; nor is there any privation in living as I do.
Perhaps you think I ought to go and housekeep for you."
"Why — ha, ha ! — I really don't know, Radie, where I
shall be. I'm not of any regiment now."
"Why, you have not sold out?" She flushed and
suddenly grew pale, for she was afraid something worse