"And this black man,--what of him? He was flung out to starve and die;
a proper fate, surely, for his presumption. Poor fool! how did he dare
to think he could compete with his masters! You know nothing of _him _?"

Surely he must be mistaken. What could this black man, or this matter,
be to her? yet as he listened her voice sounded to his ear like that of
one in mortal pain. What held him silent? Why did he not tell her, why
did he not in some way make her comprehend, that he, delicate exclusive,
and patrician, as the people of his set thought him, had gone to this
man, had lifted him from his sorrow and despondency to courage and hope
once more; had found him work; would see that the place he strove to
fill in the world should be filled, could any help of his secure that
end. Why did the modesty which was a part of him, and the high-bred
reserve which shrank from letting his own mother know of the good deeds
his life wrought, hold him silent now?

In that silence something fell between them. What was it? But a moment,
yet in that little space it seemed to him as though continents divided
them, and seas rolled between. "Francesca!" he cried, under his
breath,--he had never before called her by her Christian
name,--"Francesca!" and stretched out his hand towards her, as a
drowning man stretches forth his hand to life.

"This room is stifling!" she said for answer; and her voice, dulled and
unnatural, seemed to his strangely confused senses as though it came
from a far distance,--"I am suffering: shall we go out to the air?"