With an air of perfect patience the old man, remaining mute and keeping his eyes cast down, stood, retaining Lizzie’s arm, as though in his habit of passive endurance, it would be all one to him if he had stood there motionless all night.
“If Mr. Aaron,” said Eugene, who soon found this fatiguing, “will be good enough to relinquish his charge to me, he will be quite free for any engagement he may have at the synagogue. Mr. Aaron, will you have the kindness?”
But the old man stood stock still.
“Good evening, Mr. Aaron,” said Eugene, politely; “we need not detain you.” Then turning to Lizzie, “Is our friend Mr. Aaron a little deaf?”
“My hearing is very good, Christian gentleman,” replied the old man, calmly; “but I will hear only one voice tonight, desiring me to leave this damsel before I have conveyed her to her home. If she requests it, I will do it. I will do it for no one else.”
“May I ask why so, Mr. Aaron?” said Eugene, quite undisturbed in his ease.
“Excuse me. If she asks me, I will tell her,” replied the old man. “I will tell no one else.”
“I do not ask you,” said Lizzie, “and I beg you to take me home. Mr. Wrayburn, I have had a bitter trial tonight, and I hope you will not think me ungrateful, or mysterious, or changeable. I am neither; I am wretched. Pray remember what I said to you. Pray, pray, take care.”
“My dear Lizzie,” he returned, in a low voice, bending over her on the other side; “of what? Of whom?”
“Of anyone you have lately seen and made angry.”