"It is not that he wants to send you away, but that he thinks it will be better for you to be with some friend. Here you must be so much alone."
"Why don't you stay? But I suppose Mr. Finn wants you to be back in London."
"It is not that only, or, to speak the truth, not that at all. Mr. Finn could come here if it were suitable. Or for a week or two he might do very well without me. But there are other reasons. There is no one whom your mother respected more highly than Lady Cantrip."
"I never heard her speak a word of Lady Cantrip."
"Both he and she are your father's intimate friends."
"Does papa want to be—alone here?"
"It is you, not himself, of whom he is thinking."
"Therefore I must think of him, Mrs. Finn. I do not wish him to be alone. I am sure it would be better that I should stay with him."
"He feels that it would not be well that you should live without the companionship of some lady."
"Then let him find some lady. You would be the best, because he knows you so well. I, however, am not afraid of being alone. I am sure he ought not to be here quite by himself. If he bids me go, I must go, and then of course I shall go where he sends me; but I won't say that I think it best that I should go, and certainly I do not want to go to Lady Cantrip." This she said with great decision, as though the matter was one on which she had altogether made up her mind. Then she added, in a lower voice: "Why doesn't papa speak to me about it?"