It occurred to me even that it was a
trick of a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the mellow quietude of
her wits, this stately needlewoman dropped a hint that she took the
situation rather less seriously than her friend. When he rose to light
the candles she looked across at me with a quick, intelligent smile, and
tapped her forehead with her forefinger; then, as from a sudden feeling
of compassionate loyalty to poor Theobald, I preserved a blank face, she
gave a little shrug and resumed her work.
What was the relation of this singular couple? Was he the most ardent of
friends or the most reverent of lovers? Did she regard him as an
eccentric swain, whose benevolent admiration of her beauty she was not
ill pleased to humour at this small cost of having him climb into her
little parlour and gossip of summer nights? With her decent and sombre
dress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of priestly needlework,
she looked like some pious lay-member of a sisterhood, living by special
permission outside her convent walls. Or was she maintained here aloft
by her friend in comfortable leisure, so that he might have before him
the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted and untarnished by the struggle
for existence? Her shapely hands, I observed, wore very fair and white;
they lacked the traces of what is called honest toil.
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