slowly and softly, from the glass to the sofa, from the sofa to the chair, from the chair to the window—she moved, in short, across the whole of the room, until she reached my side. She leaned to look at my work and her hair, in its net of velvet, brushed my own.
''You sew neatly,'' she said—though I had not, not then. I had sewn hard, and my stitches were crooked.
Then she stood and said nothing. Once or twice she drew in her breath. I thought there was something she longed to ask me, but dared not. In the end she moved away again.
And so our trap—that I had thought so lightly of, and worked so hard to lay—was finally set; and wanted only time to go quickly by
and spring it. Gentleman was hired to work as Mr Lilly''s secretary until the end of April, and meant to stay out his contract to the last—''So that the old man won''t have the breaking of that to charge me with,'' he said to me, laughing, ''alongside the breaking of certain other things.'' He planned to leave when he was meant to—that is, the evening of the last day of the month; but, instead of taking the train for London, he would hang about, and come back to the house at the dead of night, for me and Maud. He must steal her away and not be caught, and then he must marry her—quick as he could, and before her uncle should hear of it and find her and take her home again. He had it all figured out. He could not fetch her in a pony and cart, for he should never have got it past the gate-house. He meant to bring a boat and take her off along the river, to some small out-of-the-way church where she would not be known as Mr Lilly''s niece.