“But why?”
“I did the same with Lady Rideover when she took me on at Taplow.”
“Why—again?”
“For the reason that—that if you ever came to find out what I was doing you’d misunderstand it; just as I see you—you do.”
“But I don’t. I don’t misunderstand it when I say that in going to my sisters you wanted to be—you mustn’t be offended!—you wanted to be near me—to watch over me as much as possible.”
“You were the only man I knew at that time who’d taken the actual step of going to the war. If there’d been any others—”
“It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a hundred. I don’t misunderstand it when I say that as soon as you knew I was going home by this boat you arranged—”
“To go home by it too,” she forestalled, quickly, “so that you should have somebody near you who could get about in the normal way in case there was danger. I admit that. It’s perfectly true.” She turned round on me with fire in her manner as well as in her eyes. “But what do you think I’m going home for?”
I repeated what she had said a few days before:
“You’re going home on account of your father—and to interest him and other Americans in American duty as to the war.”