e table.

Ah yes--she loved him very, very much. But she could not bear to confess
it, for all that, and a moment afterwards she was sitting upright again
in her chair, feeling that she had weathered the first storm. Her
companion, who was not ignorant of her ways, contented herself then with
patting Margaret's hand caressingly during the instant it remained in
her own, before it was drawn away. There was a world of kindness and of
gentle humanity in the gaunt gentlewoman's manner, showing that the
heart within was not withered yet. Then Miss Skeat flattened the book
before her with the paper-cutter, and began to read. Reading aloud had
become to her a second nature, and whether she had liked it or not at
first, she had learned to do it with perfect ease and indifference,
neither letting her voice drag languidly and hesitatingly when she was
tired, nor falling into that nerve-rending fault of readers who vainly
endeavour to personate the characters in dialogue, and to give
impressiveness in the descriptive portions. She never made a remark, or
asked her hearer's opinion. If the Countess was in the humour to sleep,
the reading was soporific; if she desired to listen, she felt that her
companion was not trying to bias her judgment by the introduction of
dramatic intonation and effect. With an even, untiring correctness of
utterance, Miss Skeat read one book just as she read another--M. Thiers
or Mr. Henry James, Mark Twain or a Parliamentary Report--it was all one
to her. Poor Miss Skeat!

But to Margaret the evening seemed long and the night longer, and many
days and evenings and nights afterwards. Not that she doubted, but that
she thought--well--perhaps she thought she ought to doubt. Some cunning
reader of face and character, laughing and making love by turns, had
once told her she had more heart than head. Every woman knows she ought
to seem flattered at being considered a "person of heart," and yet every
woman cordially hates to be told so. And, at last, Margaret began to
wonder whether it were true. Should she have admitted she loved a man
who left her a moment afterwards in order to make a voyage of two months
for the mere furthering of his worldly interest? But then--he told her
he was going before he kissed her. What could be the "other reason"?

CHAPTER XVII.

It is not to be supposed that a man of Barker's character would neglect
the signal advantage he had gained in being injured, or at least badly