"Come live with me and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steep mountains, yield."--Marlowe.
Sanderson, recovering his self-possession almost immediately, drawled
out: "Glad to see you, Dave. Came over thinking I might be in time to go
over to Putnam's with your people. They had gone, so I stopped long
enough to get warm. I must be going now. Good-night, Miss--Miss"--(he
seemed, to have great difficulty in recalling the name) "Moore."
David paid no attention to him; his eyes were riveted on Anna, who had
changed color and was now like ivory flushing into life. She trembled
and fell to her knees, making a pretense of gathering up her knitting
that had fallen.
"What brought Sanderson here, Anna? Is he anything to you--are you
anything to him?"
She tried to assume a playful lightness, but it failed dismally. It
was all her pallid lips could do to frame the words: "Why, Mr. David,
what a curious question! What possible interest could the 'catch' of
the neighborhood have in your father's servant?"
The suggestion of flippancy that her words contained irritated the
grave, quiet man as few things could have done. He turned from her and
would have left the room, but she detained him.
"I am sorry I wounded you, Mr. David, but, indeed, you have no right to
ask."
"I know it, Anna, and you won't give me the right; but how dared that
cub Sanderson speak to you in that way?" He caught her hand, and
unconsciously wrung it till she cried out in pain. "Forgive me, dear,
I would not hurt you for the world; but that man's manner toward you
makes me wild."
She looked up at him from beneath her long, dark lashes; he thought her
eyes were like the glow of forest fires burning through brushwood. "We
will never think of him again, Mr. David. I assure you that I am no
more to Mr. Sanderson than he is to me, and that is--nothing."
"Thank you for those words, Anna. I cannot tell you how happy they
make me. But I do not understand you at all. Even a countryman like
me can see that you have never been used to our rough way of living;
you were never born to this kind of thing, and yet when that man
Sanderson looks at you or talks to you, there is always an undertone of
contempt in his look, his words."