An hour or more had gone by when Mr. Radbury knocked at the door, timidly.
“Come in, Radbury,” Allerton cried, in a gayety he didn’t feel. “Have a drink.”
Mr. Radbury looked at the bottle and the glass. He looked at his young employer, who with his hands in his pockets, was again standing by the window. It was the first time in all the years of his service, first with the father and then with the son, that this invitation had been given him.
“Thanks, Mr. Rash,” he said, with a thick, shaky utterance. “Liquor and I are strangers. I wish I could feel––”
But the old man’s trembling anxiety forced on Allerton the fact that the foolish game was up. “All right, Radbury. Was only joking. No harm done. Had only taken the thing out to—to look at it.”
Before sitting down to read and sign the letters he put both glass and bottle back into the keeping of Queen Caroline Murat, saying to himself as he did so: “I must find some other way.”
He was thrown back thus on Barbara’s suggestion of a few hours earlier. He must get rid of the girl! He had scarcely as yet considered this proposal, though not because he deemed it unworthy of himself. Nothing could be unworthy of himself. A man who was so little of a man as he was entitled to do anything, however base, and feel no shame. It was simply that his mind hadn’t worked round to looking at the thing as feasible. And yet it was; plainly it was. The law allowed for it, if one only took advantage of the law’s allowances. It would be beastly, of 126 course; and more beastly for him than the average of men; but because it was beastly it were better done at once, before the girl got used to luxurious surroundings.
But even this resolution, speedy as it was, came a little late. By evening Letty was already growing used to luxurious surroundings, and finding herself at home in them.
First, there were no longer any women in the house, and with the three men—Steptoe’s friends being already installed—she found herself safe from the prying and criticizing feminine.