Read "The Surgeon's Guest" by Stanley J. Weyman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The walk which roused so much indignation in Edgar Woolley's breast had been one of more than common interest; as perhaps something in the faces of the returning couple assured him. There is a point in the journey towards intimacy at which one or other of the converging pair turns the conversation inwards, disclosing his or her hopes, fears, ambitions. Pleasance in the purest innocence had reached this stage to-day; arriving at it by the road of that silence which is tolerable only when some progress has been made towards friendship, and which even then invites attack. The tall gentleman, having lopped and picked at her bidding, gathered up the last scraps of the hawthorn which he had ruthlessly broken from the tree. He turned to find his companion gazing into distance with a shadow on her face. "Your thoughts are not pleasant ones, I fear," he said, half lightly, half seriously. "A penny were too much for them."
"I was thinking of Mr. Woolley," she answered simply.