'I can't have you visiting her, if that's what you mean. Why, after all the pains I've been at to get you on your proper level at home, here's my Lady Louisa and all her crew, in their confounded insolence, fighting shy of you, and you can't give them a better colour for it than by running after a woman like that—divorced to begin with, and known at every gambling table in Europe.'
'I know that, Alwyn, dear Alwyn' (it was very seldom that she called him so, and she put her clasped hands on his shoulder); 'but I am sure she is dying, and she was so good to me, I can't bear doing nothing for her.'
'Well, there's twenty—fifty, if you like.'
'Thank you, thank you, but you know I never meant to visit her—like—like society; only to go sometimes privately and—'
'And how about your daughter?'
'I would not take her on any account. What I want to do is this. Mrs. Houghton spoke of her sister, a kind good woman in England, who would take her home, and love her, if only she could bring herself to go. Now, I think I could persuade her to write, or let me write to the sister—and if only the two were together again! It is very dreadful to think of her dying alone, in the way she is going on!'
'What, little saint, you want to try your hand on her? I should say she was too tough an old sinner for you.'
'Oh, Alwyn! her heart was very near, though she tried to keep it back. I do not want to—to do what you mean—only to get her to let her sister come. I'm sure that would do the rest.'
'If any sister does more than you, you little witch,' he said.
Alice pressed him no more then, but a day or two later, when she knew he had an engagement, she arranged to dispose of Nuttie with the clergyman's wife, and then begged permission to go by train to Mentone, and come back in the evening. He did not like it—no more did she—for she was perfectly unaccustomed to travelling alone, but there was a deep sense of sacred duty upon her, only strengthened by her unwillingness to realise how much she owed to Mrs. Houghton.