"Ah! my father," exclaimed Sybil, and then with a faint blush
of which she was perhaps unconscious, she added, as if
apprehensive Gerard would not recall his old companion, "you
remember Mr Franklin?"
"This gentleman and myself had the pleasure of meeting
yesterday," said Gerard embarrassed, while Egremont himself
changed colour and was infinitely confused. Sybil felt
surprised that her father should have met Mr Franklin and not
have mentioned a circumstance naturally interesting to her.
Egremont was about to speak when the street-door was opened.
And were they to part again, and no explanation? And was
Sybil to be left with her father, who was evidently in no
haste, perhaps had no great tendency, to give that
explanation? Every feeling of an ingenuous spirit urged
Egremont personally to terminate this prolonged misconception.
You will permit me, I hope," he said, appealing as much to
Gerard as to his daughter, "to enter with you for a few
moments.
It was not possible to resist such a request, yet it was
conceded on the part of Gerard with no cordiality. So they
entered the large gloomy hail of the house, and towards the
end of a long passage Gerard opened a door, and they all went
into a spacious melancholy room, situate at the back of the
house, and looking upon a small square plot of dank grass, in
the midst of which rose a very weather-stained Cupid, with one
arm broken, and the other raised in the air with a long shell
to its mouth.
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