And then, utterly to Mrs. Tracy’s bewilderment, Ben dropped into his chair, and covered his face with his hands, and sighed. The sigh was so deep, and heavy, and full of care that it startled her. Had he not just got what he had been struggling for? She had given him her promise,--a reluctant, and perhaps not very certain bond,--and yet he gave but a sigh over it,--the sigh of a man ruined and broken. She looked at his bowed head, at the curious strain of the hands into which his face was bent. What a strange, unsatisfactory, ungracious way of receiving a favour! What a highflown, exaggerated sort of a young man! She was thinking so, gazing across the table at him, sometimes letting her eye stray a little anxiously to the pocket-book, with a pucker on her forehead and a cold dread in her heart, when the unaccountable fellow as suddenly unveiled his cloudy countenance and looked straight up into her face. Probably he caught her glance retreating from the pocket-book, for he laughed, and all at once, to her amaze and consternation, took that up. ‘You must take care of your health,’ he said,--and whether he was speaking in mockery or in kindness Mrs. Tracy could not make out,--‘and when this is done let me know,’ he added, dropping it softly without any warning into her lap. ‘I may be rich by that time; and when I am rich, you know, you are to be on my side.’ ‘Oh my dear, I am on your side now!’ she cried with a half-sob, and stretched out to take his hand, and would have kissed it, in the relief of getting what she wanted. She did not understand the glow of shame that came over Ben’s face, the stern clasp he gave to her hand, almost hurting her, resisting her soft attempt to draw it to her. And he held her thus, as in a vice, and looked down upon her stormily, keenly, as if asking himself whether he could believe her or not. ‘And I will see her, too, before you go,’ he said, with an abruptness she had never seen in him before; and then suddenly left her, without another word, closing the door behind him, and audibly, with heavy, rude footsteps, descending the stairs. Mrs. Tracy sat motionless, with her fingers all white and crumpled together, and the pocket-book lying in her lap, and heard the street-door shut behind him, and his steps echo along the street. Then only did she draw breath. It had been a tough moment, but she could flatter herself she had won the victory. And yet she had a cry to herself, as she sat alone awaking out of her stupefaction. What a brute he was! Her fingers were crushed, her nerves quite shaken. But then she had the hundred pounds in her lap, and had given only the vaguest general promise by way of paying for it,--a promise which might be forgotten or not as it should happen when there were a thousand miles of land and water between the two.