Hesper nodded.
"When are you going to be--"--she was about to say "cut up" but
there was a something occasionally visible in Hesper that now and
then checked one of her less graceful coarsenesses. "When is the
purchase to be completed?" she asked, instead.
"Good Heavens, Sepia! don't be so heartless!" cried Hesper.
"Things are not quite so bad as that! I am not yet in the hell of
knowing that. The day is not fixed for the great red dragon to
make a meal of me."
"I see you were not asleep in church, as I thought, all the time
of the sermon, last Sunday," said Sepia.
"I did my best, but I could not sleep: every time little Mowbray
mentioned the beast, I thought of Mr. Redmain; and it made me too
miserable to sleep."
"Poor Hesper!--Well! let us hope that, like the beast in the
fairy-tale, he will turn out a man after all."
"My heart will break," cried Hesper, throwing herself into a
chair. "Pity me, Sepia; _you_ love me a little."
A slight shadow darkened yet more Sepia's shadowy brow.
"Hesper," she said, gravely, "you never told me there was
anything of that sort! Who is it?"
"Mr. Redmain, of course!--I don't know what you mean, Sepia."
"You said your heart was breaking: who is it for?" asked Sepia,
almost imperiously, and raising her voice a little.
"Sepia!" cried Hesper, in bewilderment.
"Why should your heart be breaking, except you loved somebody?"
"Because I hate _him_," answered Hesper.
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