"Where are you going?"
Fortunately, I had thought of that.
"To some quiet place in Massachusetts. When we're settled I shall let you know."
He suggested a hotel at Lenox as suitable for such a sojourn.
"She'd rather go where she wouldn't meet people whom she knows. The minute she has decided I shall communicate with you again."
"But I can see you in the morning before you leave?"
The accent was now that of request. The overtone in it was pitiful.
"Oh, don't try to, sir. She wants to get away from every one. It will be so much better for her to do just as she likes. She had got to a point where she had to escape from everything she knew and cared about; and so all of a sudden—only—only to-day—she decided to come with me. She doesn't need a trained nurse, because she's perfectly well. All she wants is some one to be with her—whom she knows she can trust. She hasn't even taken Angélique. She simply begs to be alone."
In the end I made my point, but only after genuine beseeching on his part and much repetition on mine. Having said good-night to him—he actually used the words—I called up Angélique, in order to bring peace to a household in which the mistress's desertion would create some consternation.
Angélique and I might have been called friends. The fact that I spoke French comme une Française, as she often flattered me by saying, was a bond between us, and we had the further point of sympathy that we were both devoted to Mrs. Brokenshire. Besides that, there is something in me—I suppose it must be a plebeian streak—which enables me to understand servants and get along with them.