A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be waiting for her. “He’s coming at half-past five,” she said, and, with his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading logic and Plato; “to keep up with me, you know.”
Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder as she went past his chair. “Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me what you decide,” she said.
“I’ll have no news for you,” Palgrave replied.
Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her and, as she paused there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur: “Will you come down with me?”
“Let me see you to the bottom of the stair,” he seized the intimation, and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her intention in coming to tea: “It’s only so that you shan’t think I’ll oppose you. If you can persuade him, I shall not oppose it. I think he’s right. But it’s too hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it’s right to go.”
She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he paused behind her, astonished. “You want me to persuade him of what you think wrong?”
She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. “People must think for themselves. I don’t know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I’ve influenced Palgrave. Perhaps he wouldn’t have felt like this if it hadn’t been for me. I don’t know. But if you can make him feel it right to go, I shall be glad.” She stepped out into the quadrangle.
“You mean,” said Oldmeadow, following her, and strangely moved, “that you’d rather have him killed than stay behind like this?”
“It would be much happier for him, wouldn’t it,” she said. “If he could feel it right to go.”
They were under the arch of the Library, she still going slowly, before him, and Oldmeadow stopped her there. “Mrs. Barney, forgive me—may I ask you something?” He had put his hand on her shoulder and she paused and faced him. “It’s something personal, and I’ve no right to be personal with you, as I know. But—have you been to see Barney at Tidworth?”