My step-sister jerked up her elbows, uttering a hopeless exclamation. I think she could have thrown me into the pond with the fiercest satisfaction.
“You are quite welcome to imagine it,” she said. “Your turning up here is the very last thing I desired.”
I laughed.
“Well, it was your own choice, you know, to come and join me. I neither expected nor invited you; and it appears to me that whatever suspicion my movements may have aroused in an august bosom will hardly have been allayed by that rash step on your part.”
“I hope to heaven we were both unobserved; but to see you made me desperate. I thought something had happened; that you were bent on some folly which might betray the whole plot. Has anything occurred to disturb you, Felix? I think, seeing my distress, you might be candid with me.”
“To be sure I will, Marion, now you ask. Do you realise that three weeks and more have passed since I undertook a certain charge?”
“I know, Felix. I cannot help it.”
“And that during all that time I have received no word, no hint from you as to——”
“Yes, I know. I cannot help it, I say.” She looked away, as if momentarily disturbed or embarrassed, then faced me resolutely: “Do you want to get rid of her?”
I should have answered, “yes,” unequivocally. What motive for delicacy or hesitation could I have? Wisdom and policy alike clamoured for release from a position which, impossibly heroic at its outset, was daily growing more and more compromising in the sentiments it inevitably engendered. My professional interests, my personal honour were both concerned in the response; and how did I vindicate them? I stumbled a moment; and then temporised:—