I turned the subject to Opal Fawcett.
"Could you leave Miss Fawcett at once, and come to me?" I asked. "Would she be vexed? Or would you rather stay with her over Sunday?"
"I could come this afternoon," Joyce said. "I'd be glad to. And I don't think Opal would mind. She wanted me at first. But—but——Well, I'm beginning to bore her now; or anyhow, we're getting on each other's nerves."
This reply, and the embarrassed look on Joyce's face, set me going upon a new track. Was Opal Fawcett in the "story" which my imagination had begun to write around Miss Arnold and Robert Lorillard? If so, what could be her part in it?
I found no satisfactory answer. Years ago, when she was on the stage and acting with Lorillard, Opal had perhaps been in love with him, like hundreds of other women. But since then he'd married, and fought in the war, and later had led the life of a hermit, while she pursued her successful "career" in town. It was unlikely that they had seen much of each other, even if their old, slight acquaintance had been kept up at all. Still, Opal might have been curious about Lorillard and the "simple life." She might have welcomed Joyce for the sake of what she could tell of him, and Joyce might have rebelled when she saw what Opal wanted from her.
I thanked my own wits for giving me this "tip." Without it, I mightn't have resisted the strong temptation to proceed with a little dextrous "pumping" on my own—just a word wedged into some chink in the armour now and then, to find out if poor Joyce had fallen a victim to Lorillard's undying charm.
As it was, I determined to shut up like a clam, and do as I would be done by were I in the girl's place. If she'd slipped into loving her employer, and he had thought best to banish her, for her own good, the wound in poor Joyce's self-respect must be as deep as that in her heart. Every sensitive nerve must throb with anguish, and only a wretch would deliberately probe the hurt with questions, in mere selfish curiosity.
"It's not your business," I said to myself. And I vowed to do all I could to make Joyce Arnold forget—whatever it was that she might want to forget.
She did come to me that afternoon. I had one spare room in my flat, and I made it as pretty and homelike as I could with flowers and books and little things I stole from my own quarters. The girl was pathetically grateful! She opened out to me like a flower—that is, in affection. I felt in her a warm, eager anxiety to serve and help me, not for the wages I gave, but for love. It was like a perfume in the place. And Joyce Arnold was intelligent as well as sweet. She had been highly educated, and there seemed to be few things she hadn't thought about. Most of the old aunt's money had been spent in making the girl what she was, so there was little left; but Joyce would always be able to earn her living.
If she tired of secretarial work, she could quite well teach music, both piano and voice production. She had taken singing lessons from a famous and successful man. Had her voice been strong enough, she might have got concert engagements, it was so honey-sweet, so exquisitely trained. But she called it a "twilight voice"; which it really was, and often I gave up going out for the joy of having her sing to me alone in the dusk.