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He saw it, and at once gratified our curiosity. "It is a rule," he said, "with masters in the art of making tea, that one infusion ought never to be used twice. If we want any more, we will make more; and if you feel inclined to join us, Miss Cristel, we will fill the third cup." And why, after what he had just said, did I see her eyes willingly rest on him, for the first time in my experience?
Cristel had been reading, while I read, over my shoulder. She wrote on the next blank leaf: "Shall I make the tea?" "Now," she said to me, "notice what happens." Following him, she touched his arm, and presented her request. He shook his head in token of refusal. She came back to her place by me. "You expected that?" I said. "Yes." "Why did you ask me to notice his refusal?"
"I wouldn't distress you, Cristel, for the whole world," I said and left her to conclude that I had felt the influence of her entreaties in the right way. She tried to thank me; the tears rose in her eyes she signed to me to leave her, poor soul, as if she felt ashamed of herself. I was shocked; I was grieved; I was more than ever secretly resolved to go back to her.
"Surely it's not time to go to bed yet," I ventured to say. She was still on her good behavior to her landlord. "Not if you object to it, sir," she answered. This recognition of my authority was irresistible. Cristel had laid me under an obligation to her good influence for which I felt sincerely grateful she had made me laugh, for the first time since my return to England.
Low, dull, and muffled, it neither rose nor fell; it spoke slowly and deliberately, without laying the slightest emphasis on any one of the words that it uttered. In the astonishment of the moment, I forgot what Cristel had told me. I answered him as I should have answered any other unknown person who had spoken to me. "What do you want?" His hands dropped; his head sunk on his breast.
The stranded boat had not been discovered; and the crashing flight of the rocket into the air had failed to disturb the soundly-sleeping villagers. On my melancholy way back, fatigue of body and, far worse, fatigue of mind forced me to take a few minutes' rest. The dimly-flowing river was at my feet; the river on which I had seen Cristel again, for the first time since we were children.
No communication of any sort reached us from the Cur. Towards evening, I saw him pacing up and down on the road before the cottage, and speaking to his new servant. He was probably receiving instructions. The Cur's discretion was a bad sign. I should have felt more at ease, if he had tried to annoy Cristel, or to insult me.
"If an accident separated me from him," she went on, "he would be left alone in this wretched place." "What accident are you thinking of?" I asked. "Is there something going on, Cristel, that I don't know of?" Had I startled her? or had I offended her? "Can we tell what may or may not happen to us, in the time to come?" she asked abruptly.
Gloody had done his best to prepare Cristel for the terrible confidence which he had determined to repose in her, and had not succeeded. What the poor girl must have suffered, I could but too readily understand, on recalling the startling changes in her look and manner when we met at the river-margin of the wood.
She made a second attempt to release herself; and this time, she wrenched her hand out of his grasp with a strength for which he was not prepared. That fiercest anger which turns the face pale, was the anger that had possession of Cristel as she took refuge with her father. "You asked me to bear with that man," she said, "because he paid you a good rent.
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