Читать книгу Out Of The Question - William Dean Howells - Страница 8

V. Leslie and Blake.

Blake: "Excuse me. I expected to find your mother here. I didn't mean to disturb " —

Leslie, haughtily: "There's no disturbance. It's a public room: I had forgotten that. Mamma has gone to tea. I thought it was my friend Miss Wallace. I " — With a flash of indignation: "When you knew it wasn't, why did you let me speak to you in that way?"

Blake, with a smile: "I couldn't know whom you took me for, and I hadn't time to prevent your speaking."

Leslie: "You remained."

Blake, with a touch of resentment tempering his amusement: "I couldn't go away after I had come without speaking to you. It was Mrs. Bellingham I was looking for. I'm sorry not to find her, and I'll go, now."

Leslie, hastily: "Oh no! I beg your pardon. I didn't mean "—

Blake, advancing toward her, and stooping to pick up something from the floor, near the table: "Is this what you lost ? — if I've a right to know that you lost anything."

Leslie: "Oh, my ear-ring! Oh, thanks! How did you see it? I thought I had looked and felt everywhere." A quick color flies over her face as she takes the jewel from the palm of his hand. She turns to the mirror, and, seizing the tip of her delicate ear between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, hooks the pendant into place with the other, and then gives her head a little shake; the young man lightly sighs. She turns toward him, with the warmth still lingering in her cheeks. "I'm ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Blake. I wish I had your gift of doing all sorts of services — favors — to people. I wish I could find something for you."

Blake: "I wish you could — if it were the key to my room, which I came back in hopes of finding. I've mislaid it somewhere, and I thought I might have put it down with your shawls here on the table." Leslie promptly lifts one of the shawls, and the key drops from it. "That's it. Miss Bellingham, I have a favor to ask: will you give this key to your mother?"

Leslie: "This key?"

Blake: "I have found a place to sleep at a farm-house just down the road, and I want your mother to take my room; I haven't looked into it yet, and I don't know that it's worth taking. But I suppose it's better than no room at all; and I know you have none."

Leslie, with cold hauteur, after looking absently at him for a moment: "Thanks. It's quite impossible. My mother would never consent."

Blake: "The room will stand empty, then. I meant to give it up from the first, — as soon as I found that you were not provided for, — but I hated to make a display of it before all the people down there in the office. I'll go now and leave the key with the landlord, as I ought to have done, without troubling you. But — I had hardly the chance of doing so after we came here."

Leslie, with enthusiasm: "Oh, Mr. Blake, do you really mean to give us your room after you've been so odiously — Oh, it's too bad; it's too bad! You mustn't; no, you shall not."

Blake: "I will leave the key on the table here Good night. Or — I shall not see you in the morning: perhaps I had better say goodbye."

Leslie: "Goodbye? In the morning?"

Blake: "I've changed my plans, and I'm going away to-morrow. Goodbye."

Leslie: "Going— Mamma will be very sorry to— Oh, Mr. Blake, I hope you are not going because — But indeed — I want you to believe"—

Blake, devoutly: "I believe it. Goodbye!" He turns away to go, and Leslie, standing bewildered and irresolute, lets him leave the room; then she hastens to the door after him, and encounters her mother.