This perplexed him. “It would be better not, but”—his eyes wandered all round the room before he finished—“I suppose she would wish it. And you won’t meet again and—and you’ll tell her you are going home to England?”
“I’m afraid you must leave it to me what to say,” I replied, with a smile. “I think you may trust my discretion. And you must do your part afterwards carefully. Keep her out of the way when we play the comedy of that arrest later, or she may cast herself for a part in it. She’s plucky enough to avow herself, and that would mix things up a good deal for us all, you know.”
He frowned, threw up his hands in troubled perplexity and pushed his chair back.
“We had better get it over,” he exclaimed resignedly. “I’ll go and tell her you are leaving.”
He walked toward the door, paused, and turned as if to say something more, then tossed up his hands again and went out of the room.
I stared out of the window into the small, but carefully tended garden, a prey to the very mixed thoughts which the good Father had succeeded in rousing.
Then the door opened and Volna came in alone.
CHAPTER XIII
VOLNA IS A LITTLE REFRACTORY
SHE was dressed for her new character of the housekeeper’s niece, and wore a white apron and a peasant girl’s picturesque head-dress.
She closed the door behind her, dropped me a little curtsey and said with the demurest of glances: “Did you please to send for me, sir?” Then she burst out laughing and ran to me, both hands outstretched, as though we had not met for a long time. “Now, wasn’t my instinct right?”