“Not yet, Mr Foulkes.”
“She’ll be overwhelmed,” said I. It seemed the right observation to offer.
For the first time, Miss Gladwin laughed openly. “Will she?” she retorted, with a scorn that was hardly civil. “She’ll think it less than I owe her.”
“You owe her nothing. What you may choose to give——”
Miss Gladwin interrupted me without ceremony “She confuses me with fate—with what happened—with her loss—and—and disappointment. She identifies me with all that.”
“Then she’s very unreasonable.”
“I daresay; but I can understand.” She smiled. “I can understand very well how one girl can seem like that to another, Mr Foulkes—how she can embody everything of that sort.” She paused and then added: “If I thought for a moment that she’d be—what was your foolish word?—oh yes, ‘overwhelmed,’ I wouldn’t do it. But I know her much too well. You remember that my adherents say we’ve been like sisters? Don’t sisters understand each other?”
“You’re hard on her—hard and unfair,” I said. Her bitterness was not good to witness.
“Perhaps I’m hard; I’m not unfair.” Her voice trembled a little; her composure was not what it had been at the beginning of our interview. “At any rate, I’m trying to be fair now; only you mustn’t—you must not—think that she’ll be overwhelmed.”
“Very well,” said I. “I won’t think that. And I’ll put matters in train about the money. You’ll have to go gently for a bit afterwards, you know. Even you are not a gold mine.” She nodded, and I rose from my chair. “Is that all for to-day?” I asked.