“Don’t say you mean so coldly or unkindly, Eddy, please, if you can help it.”
“I mean so sensibly and delicately, so wisely and affectionately.”
“That’s my dear brother!” She kissed his hand in a little rapture. “The dear girls will be dreadfully disappointed,” added Rosa, laughing, with the dewdrops glistening in her bright eyes. “They have looked forward to it so, poor pets!”
“Ah! but I fear it will be a worse disappointment to Jack,” said Edwin Drood, with a start. “I never thought of Jack!”
Her swift and intent look at him as he said the words, could no more be recalled than a flash of lightning can. But it appeared as though she would have instantly recalled it, if she could; for she looked down, confused, and breathed quickly.
“You don’t doubt its being a blow to Jack, Rosa?”
She merely replied, and that, evasively and hurriedly: Why should she? She had not thought about it. He seemed, to her, to have so little to do with it.
“My dear child! can you suppose that anyone so wrapped up in another— Mrs. Tope’s expression: not mine—as Jack is in me, could fail to be struck all of a heap by such a sudden and complete change in my life? I say sudden, because it will be sudden to him , you know.”
She nodded twice or thrice, and her lips parted as if she would have assented. But she uttered no sound, and her breathing was no slower.
“How shall I tell Jack!” said Edwin, ruminating. If he had been less occupied with the thought, he must have seen her singular emotion. “I never thought of Jack. It must be broken to him, before the town-crier