“O no, but should not you have something?”
“What time is it?”
“6.30.”
“Too soon yet for that misery;” then, after some silence, “I’m so glad you are come. Can you take mother home?”
“I would; but you will.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Now, Jock, you are not getting into Armine’s state of mind, giving yourself up and wishing to die?”
“Not at all. There are hosts of things I want to do first. There’s that discovery of father’s. With what poor Janet told me of Hermann’s doings, and what I saw at Abville, if I could only get an hour of my proper wits, I could put the others up to a wrinkle that would make the whole thing comparatively plain.”
“Should not you be better if you dictated it, and got it off your mind?”
“So I thought and tried, but presently I saw mother looking queer, and she said I was tired, and had gone on enough. I made her read it to me afterwards, and I had gone off into a muddle, and said something that would have been sheer murder. So I had better leave it alone. Old Vanbro mistrusts every word I say because of the Hermann connection, and indeed I may not always have talked sense to him. Those things work out in God’s own time, and the Monk is on the track. I’d like to have seen him, but I’ve got you.”