'O why, why, why, did you say I was at home!' cried Rosa,
helplessly.
The maid replies, that Mr. Jasper never asked the question.
That he said he knew she was at home, and begged she might be told
that he asked to see her.
'What shall I do! what shall I do!' thinks Rosa, clasping her
hands.
Possessed by a kind of desperation, she adds in the next breath,
that she will come to Mr. Jasper in the garden. She shudders at
the thought of being shut up with him in the house; but many of its
windows command the garden, and she can be seen as well as heard
there, and can shriek in the free air and run away. Such is the
wild idea that flutters through her mind.
She has never seen him since the fatal night, except when she was
questioned before the Mayor, and then he was present in gloomy
watchfulness, as representing his lost nephew and burning to avenge
him. She hangs her garden-hat on her arm, and goes out. The
moment she sees him from the porch, leaning on the sun-dial, the
old horrible feeling of being compelled by him, asserts its hold
upon her. She feels that she would even then go back, but that he
draws her feet towards him. She cannot resist, and sits down, with
her head bent, on the garden-seat beside the sun-dial. She cannot
look up at him for abhorrence, but she has perceived that he is
dressed in deep mourning. So is she. It was not so at first; but
the lost has long been given up, and mourned for, as dead.
He would begin by touching her hand.
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