perhaps—affection, interest. When she had finished, she turned to Moore, and met his eye.
“Is that pretty well repeated?” she inquired, smiling like any happy, docile child.
“I really don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? Have you not listened?”
“Yes—and looked. You are fond of poetry, Lina?”
“When I meet with real poetry, I cannot rest till I have learned it by heart, and so made it partly mine.”
Mr. Moore now sat silent for several minutes. It struck nine o’clock; Sarah entered, and said that Mr. Helstone’s servant was come for Miss Caroline.
“Then the evening is gone already,” she observed; “and it will be long, I suppose, before I pass another here.”
Hortense had been for some time nodding over her knitting; fallen into a doze now, she made no response to the remark.
“You would have no objection to come here oftener of an evening?” inquired Robert, as he took her folded mantle from the side-table, where it still lay, and carefully wrapped it round her.
“I like to come here; but I have no desire to be intrusive. I am not hinting to be asked: you must understand that.”
“Oh! I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture me for wishing to be rich, Lina; but if I were rich, you should live here always: at any rate,
