"Ah miss," said I, as the door opened revealing in the gap her white
face clouded with some new and sudden apprehension, "I beg your
pardon but I am an old man, and I got a letter to-day and my eyes are
so weak with the work I've been doing that I cannot read it. It is
from some one I love, and would you be so kind as to read off the
words for me and so relieve an old man from his anxiety."
The murmur of suspicion behind her, warned her to throw wide open the
door. "Certainly," said she, "if I can," taking the paper in her
hand.
"Just let me get a squint at that first," said a sullen voice behind
her; and the youngest of the two Schoenmakers stepped forward and
tore the paper out of her grasp.
"You are too suspicious," murmured she, looking after him with the
first assumption of that air of power and determination which I had
heard so eloquently described by the man who loved her. "There is
nothing in those lines which concerns us; let me have them back."
"You hold your tongue," was the brutal reply as the rough man opened
the folded paper and read or tried to read what was written within.
"Blast it! it's French," was his slow exclamation after a moment
spent in this way. "See," and he thrust it towards his father who
stood frowning heavily a few feet off.
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