Wedding Raiment

Sylvia sate down on the edge of the trough, and dipped her hot
little hand in the water. Then she went on quickly, and lifting her
beautiful eyes to Philip's face, with a look of inquiry--'He thinks
as Charley Kinraid may ha' been took by t' press-gang.' It was the first time she had named the name of her former lover to
her present one since the day, long ago now, when they had
quarrelled about him; and the rosy colour flushed her all over; but
her sweet, trustful eyes never flinched from their steady,
unconscious gaze.

Philip's heart stopped beating; literally, as if he had come to a
sudden precipice, while he had thought himself securely walking on
sunny greensward. He went purple all over from dismay; he dared not
take his eyes away from that sad, earnest look of hers, but he was
thankful that a mist came before them and drew a veil before his
brain. He heard his own voice saying words he did not seem to have
framed in his own mind.

'Kester's a d--d fool,' he growled.

'He says there's mebbe but one chance i' a hundred,' said Sylvia,
pleading, as it were, for Kester; 'but oh! Philip, think yo' there's
just that one chance?' 'Ay, there's a chance, sure enough,' said Philip, in a kind of
fierce despair that made him reckless what he said or did. 'There's
a chance, I suppose, for iverything i' life as we have not seen with
our own eyes as it may not ha' happened. Kester may say next as
there's a chance as your father is not dead, because we none on us
saw him----' 'Hung,' he was going to have said, but a touch of humanity came back
into his stony heart. Sylvia sent up a little sharp cry at his
words. He longed at the sound to take her in his arms and hush her
up, as a mother hushes her weeping child. But the very longing,
having to be repressed, only made him more beside himself with
guilt, anxiety, and rage. They were quite still now. Sylvia looking
sadly down into the bubbling, merry, flowing water: Philip glaring
at her, wishing that the next word were spoken, though it might stab
him to the heart. But she did not speak.