She looked up and dropped the formal tone which had hurt me. “I thought you wished to go.”
“That is harder still,” I said.
She gave me her hand impulsively. “But you don’t really think I wish to say things that hurt you. After what you have done for me and what you have had to suffer? Don’t go away with that thought, please.”
“I don’t wish to go away at all, until I have been of some help to you. I wish only to make things plain.”
“Oh, then we are not saying good-bye,” she explained, drawing her hand from mine again, and smiling; only to change the next moment to earnestness. “Why surely you know there is no one whose help I would rather have than yours.”
“For Ladislas’ sake,” I said.
Her eyes took a half wistful, half smiling expression. “No matter for whose sake. We seem fated to be always on a sort of half false footing to one another. Strangers one hour, English the next, then fellow conspirators, and then after that brother and sister, and now——” She paused, as if at a loss for a word.
“Friends,” I prompted.
“Oh, yes, always friends, I trust.”
“Then let us try to think what can be done for your mother.”