brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him that Ada was well.
“Answering my very thoughts—always the same dear girl!” said Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.
I put my veil up, but not quite.
“Always the same dear girl!” said Richard just as heartily as before.
I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard’s sleeve and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so because of the determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to him.
“My love,” said Richard, “there is no one with whom I have a greater wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me.”
“And I want you, Richard,” said I, shaking my head, “to understand someone else.”
“Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce,” said Richard, “—I suppose you mean him?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind—you, my dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody.”
I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.
“Well, well, my dear,” said Richard, “we won’t go into that now. I want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my arm,