Linden's accident, carelessly run on, had at
last unwittingly given her the clue her own innocent spirit might have
waited long for; and grief and pain would have almost overcome her, but
for a conflicting feeling of another kind raised by the preceding
colloquy between the two gentlemen. Faith was in a state of profound
uncertainty, whether Mr. Linden's words had meant anything or nothing.
They were spoken so that they might have meant nothing--but then Phil
Davids had just been with him--what for?--and whatever Mr. Linden's
words might have meant, Faith's knowledge of him made her instinctively
know, through all the talk, that they had been spoken for the sake of
warding off something disagreeable from _her_--not for himself. She
tried as far as she could to dismiss the question from her
thoughts--she could not decide it--and to go on her modest way just as
if it had not been raised; and she did; but for all that her face was a
study as she sat there writing. For amid all her abstraction in her
work, the thought of the _possibility_ that Mr. Linden might have known
what he was talking about, would send a tingling flush up into her
cheeks; and sometimes again the thoughts of pain that had been at work
would bring upon her lip almost one of those sorrowful curves which are
so lovely and so pure on the lip of a little child--and rarely seen
except there. All this was only by the way; it did not hinder the most
careful attention to what she was about, nor the steadiest working of
her quite unsteady fingers, which she knew were very likely to move
_not_ according to rule.

For a little while she was suffered to go on without interruption,
other than an occasional word about the French part of her exercise;
but presently Mr. Linden's hand began to come now and then with a
modifying touch upon her pen and fingers. At first this was done with a
gentle "forgive me!" or, "if you please, Miss Faith,"--after that
without words, though the manner always expressed them; and once or
twice, towards the very end of the lesson, he told her that such a
letter was too German--or too sophisticated; and shewed her a more
Saxon way. Which admonitions he helped her, as well as he could, to
bear, by a quietness which was really as kind, as it seemed oblivious
of all that had disturbed or could disturb her. And the words of praise
and encouragement were spoken with their usual pleasure-taking and
pleasure-giving effect. All this after a time