"You have travelled here, I believe, in company with Mrs. Merridew and
Miss Verinder?" I said.
"Yes," answered Mr. Bruff, as drily as might be.
"Miss Verinder has probably told you, that I wish her presence in the
house (and Mrs. Merridew's presence of course) to be kept a secret from
Mr. Blake, until my experiment on him has been tried first?"
"I know that I am to hold my tongue, sir!" said Mr. Bruff, impatiently.
"Being habitually silent on the subject of human folly, I am all the
readier to keep my lips closed on this occasion. Does that satisfy you?"
I bowed, and left Betteredge to show him to his room. Betteredge gave
me one look at parting, which said, as if in so many words, "You have
caught a Tartar, Mr. Jennings--and the name of him is Bruff."
It was next necessary to get the meeting over with the two ladies. I
descended the stairs--a little nervously, I confess--on my way to Miss
Verinder's sitting-room.
The gardener's wife (charged with looking after the accommodation of the
ladies) met me in the first-floor corridor. This excellent woman
treats me with an excessive civility which is plainly the offspring of
down-right terror. She stares, trembles, and curtseys, whenever I speak
to her. On my asking for Miss Verinder, she stared, trembled, and would
no doubt have curtseyed next, if Miss Verinder herself had not cut that
ceremony short, by suddenly opening her sitting-room door.
"Is that Mr. Jennings?" she asked.
Before I could answer, she came out eagerly to speak to me in the
corridor. We met under the light of a lamp on a bracket. At the first
sight of me, Miss Verinder stopped, and hesitated. She recovered herself
instantly, coloured for a moment--and then, with a charming frankness,
offered me her hand.
"I can't treat you like a stranger, Mr. Jennings," she said. "Oh, if you
only knew how happy your letters have made me!"
She looked at my ugly wrinkled face, with a bright gratitude so new to
me in my experience of my fellow-creatures, that I was at a loss how to
answer her. Nothing had prepared me for her kindness and her beauty.
The misery of many years has not hardened my heart, thank God. I was as
awkward and as shy with her, as if I had been a lad in my teens.
"Where is he now?" she asked, giving free expression to her one dominant
interest--the interest in Mr. Blake. "What is he doing? Has he spoken
of me? Is he in good spirits? How does he bear the sight of the house,
after what happened in it last year? When are you going to give him
the laudanum? May I see you pour it out? I am so interested; I am so
excited--I have ten thousand things to say to you, and they all crowd
together so that I don't know what to say first. Do you wonder at the
interest I take in this?"