"Oh, no. It is so fresh and pleasant."
She began to read again, sitting on the lowest step of the ladder;
he to write at the large old-fashioned writing-table close to the
window. There was a minute or two of profound silence, in which the
rapid scratching of Osborne's pen upon the paper was the only sound.
Then came a click of the gate, and Roger stood at the open door. His
face was towards Osborne, sitting in the light; his back to Molly,
crouched up in her corner. He held out a letter, and said in hoarse
breathlessness--
"Here's a letter from your wife, Osborne. I went past the post-office
and thought--"
Osborne stood up, angry dismay upon his face:--
"Roger! what have you done! Don't you see her?"
Roger looked round, and Molly stood up in her corner, red, trembling,
miserable, as though she were a guilty person. Roger entered the
room. All three seemed to be equally dismayed. Molly was the first to
speak; she came forward and said--
"I am so sorry! I didn't wish to hear it, but I couldn't help it. You
will trust me, won't you?" and turning to Roger she said to him with
tears in her eyes--"Please say you know I shall not tell."
"We can't help it," said Osborne, gloomily. "Only Roger, who knew
of what importance it was, ought to have looked round him before
speaking."
"So I should," said Roger. "I'm more vexed with myself than you can
conceive. Not but what I'm as sure of you as of myself," continued
he, turning to Molly.
"Yes; but," said Osborne, "you see how many chances there are
that even the best-meaning persons may let out what it is of such
consequence to me to keep secret."
"I know you think it so," said Roger.
"Well, don't let us begin that old discussion again--at any rate,
before a third person."
Molly had had hard work all this time to keep from crying. Now that
she was alluded to as the third person before whom conversation was
to be restrained, she said--
"I'm going away. Perhaps I ought not to have been here. I'm very
sorry--very. But I'll try and forget what I've heard."
"You can't do that," said Osborne, still ungraciously. "But will you
promise me never to speak about it to any one--not even to me, or to
Roger? Will you try to act and speak as if you had never heard it?
I'm sure, from what Roger has told me about you, that if you give me
this promise I may rely upon it."
"Yes; I will promise," said Molly, putting out her hand as a kind of
pledge. Osborne took it, but rather as if the action was superfluous.
She added, "I think I should have done so, even without a promise.
But it is, perhaps, better to bind oneself. I will go away now. I
wish I'd never come into this room."