“If I were to say yes, I should not speak the truth, and if I were to say no, I should not speak the truth. So I follow my bent, and you will not be offended with me. Are you going to take me for a drive to-day, I ask?”
“Certainly, if you wish it.”
“What a question! I can answer that without a scruple. I wish it with such fervour, seeing my companion, as my years may permit themselves. Where shall we go?”
“You shall choose.”
“Very well. Then we will go north by the Downs, that we may take the great free air into our lungs, and realise the more sympathetically the condition of my poor Louis.”
“O, don’t! It would kill me to be in prison. Baron, you are going to stop with us, are you not, until the trial is over?”
“Both you and your father are very good. I may have, however, to absent myself for a short time presently. We will see. In the meanwhile I am your grateful Baron.” He took vast snuff, making his eyes glisten, and somehow she liked him for it.
“I shall be glad,” she said, “when that detective goes. One will feel more at peace from the squalor of it all.”
He shook his head.
“I do not think he means to go just yet.”