'I am willing, off and on, to believe you, Captain Robert. But I don't
see any good in your making these solemn declarations.'
'Give me leave to explain, dear Miss Garland. It is to get you to be
pleased to renew an old promise--made years ago--that you'll think o'
me.'
'Not a word of any promise will I repeat.'
'Well, well, I won't urge 'ee to-day. Only let me beg of you to get over
the quite wrong notion you have of me; and it shall be my whole endeavour
to fetch your gracious favour.'
Anne turned away from him and entered the house, whither in the course of
a quarter of an hour he followed her, knocking at her door, and asking to
be let in. She said she was busy; whereupon he went away, to come back
again in a short time and receive the same answer.
'I have finished painting the summer-house for you,' he said through the
door.
'I cannot come to see it. I shall be engaged till supper-time.'
She heard him breathe a heavy sigh and withdraw, murmuring something
about his bad luck in being cut away from the starn like this. But it
was not over yet. When supper-time came and they sat down together, she
took upon herself to reprove him for what he had said to her in the
garden.
Bob made his forehead express despair.
'Now, I beg you this one thing,' he said. 'Just let me know your whole
mind. Then I shall have a chance to confess my faults and mend them, or
clear my conduct to your satisfaction.'
She answered with quickness, but not loud enough to be heard by the old
people at the other end of the table--'Then, Captain Loveday, I will tell
you one thing, one fault, that perhaps would have been more proper to my
character than to yours. You are too easily impressed by new faces, and
that gives me a _bad opinion_ of you--yes, a _bad opinion_.'
'O, that's it!' said Bob slowly, looking at her with the intense respect
of a pupil for a master, her words being spoken in a manner so precisely
between jest and earnest that he was in some doubt how they were to be
received. 'Impressed by new faces. It is wrong, certainly, of me.'
The popping of a cork, and the pouring out of strong beer by the miller
with a view to giving it a head, were apparently distractions sufficient
to excuse her in not attending further to him; and during the remainder
of the sitting her gentle chiding seemed to be sinking seriously into his
mind. Perhaps her own heart ached to see how silent he was; but she had
always meant to punish him. Day after day for two or three weeks she
preserved the same demeanour, with a self-control which did justice to
her character. And, on his part, considering what he had to put up
with--how she eluded him, snapped him off, refused to come out when he
called her, refused to see him when he wanted to enter the little parlour
which she had now appropriated to her private use, his patience testified
strongly to his good-humour.