She stopped, and
taking her arm out of mine, looked me searchingly in the face.
"Mr. Bruff," she said, "you have something to tell me about Godfrey
Ablewhite. Tell it."
I knew her well enough to take her at her word. I told it.
She put her arm again into mine, and walked on with me slowly. I felt
her hand tightening its grasp mechanically on my arm, and I saw her
getting paler and paler as I went on--but, not a word passed her lips
while I was speaking. When I had done, she still kept silence. Her head
drooped a little, and she walked by my side, unconscious of my presence,
unconscious of everything about her; lost--buried, I might almost
say--in her own thoughts.
I made no attempt to disturb her. My experience of her disposition
warned me, on this, as on former occasions, to give her time.
The first instinct of girls in general, on being told of anything which
interests them, is to ask a multitude of questions, and then to run off,
and talk it all over with some favourite friend. Rachel Verinder's first
instinct, under similar circumstances, was to shut herself up in her own
mind, and to think it over by herself. This absolute self-dependence is
a great virtue in a man.
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