"Well," said he, "if you had committed a murder, and I had told you
your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast."
"It is a large sum--don't you think there is a mistake?"
"No mistake at all."
"Perhaps you have read the figures wrong--it may be two thousand!"
"It is written in letters, not figures,--twenty thousand."
I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical
powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions
for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.
"If it were not such a very wild night," he said, "I would send
Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable
to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the
drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must
e'en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night."
He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. "Stop
one minute!" I cried.
"Well?"
"It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how
he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-
way place, had the power to aid in my discovery."
"Oh! I am a clergyman," he said; "and the clergy are often appealed
to about odd matters." Again the latch rattled.
"No; that does not satisfy me!" I exclaimed: and indeed there was
something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of
allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.
"It is a very strange piece of business," I added; "I must know more
about it."
"Another time."
"No; to-night!--to-night!" and as he turned from the door, I placed
myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.
"You certainly shall not go till you have told me all," I said.
"I would rather not just now."
"You shall!--you must!"
"I would rather Diana or Mary informed you."
Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax:
gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.
"But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he, "difficult to
persuade."
"And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off."
"And then," he pursued, "I am cold: no fervour infects me."