"But I think, miss," she answered, "Mr. Frank must have known you was coming." And this Miss Bracy could not deny. She had never told a lie in her life.
"It is very likely—no, it is certain—that he guessed," she admitted.
"And if so, it comes to the same thing," Bassett persisted, with a shade of weariness in her voice.
"You ungrateful girl! You ungrateful and quite extraordinary girl! First you inveigle that poor boy at the very outset of his career, and then when upon a supposed point of honour he offers to marry you—"
"A 'supposed' point, miss? Do you say 'supposed'?"
"Not one in a thousand would offer such a redemption. And even he cannot know what it will mean to his life—what it will cost him."
"I shall tell him, miss," said Bassett quietly.
"And his parents—what do you suppose they would say, were they alive?
His poor mother, for instance?"
Bassett dismissed this point silently. To Miss Bracy the queerest thing about the girl was the quiet practical manner she had put on so suddenly.
"You said, miss, that Mr. Frank wants to make amends on a 'supposed' point of honour. Don't you think it a real one?"