"You couldn't do any permanent good," she said earnestly. "Edgar must really act alone, whether you are here or not. He hasn't done any of his practising here anyway, except those uncanny noises in his room."
"No. There is some piano house where he has been able to use a room at noon; but his teacher sails this week and he cannot get the room any more. He would naturally do a lot of work at home after you were gone, if he felt at ease; and if I were here, it would help a great deal."
Mrs. Fabian felt baffled. The truth of Kathleen's proposition was unanswerable; and to urge any claim above Edgar's good at this crucial time would be, she knew, inexcusable in his sister's eyes.
The girl, burdened with the double responsibility of her father's confidence, and Edgar's future, turned again to the window and gazed out into the darkness, while Mrs. Fabian, leaning back in the breeze from the electric fan, put on her thinking-cap. It seemed hard that her wayward boy, if he had started on a worthy road, should manage at his very first step to get in her way.
Her will was strong and shrewd. When later that night she was alone with her husband, she opened the subject.
"Kathleen tells me Edgar has taken up serious work with his voice."
"Kathleen is optimistic," was the laconic reply.
"I think, Henry, we ought to meet him half-way in any honourable undertaking."
Mr. Fabian made an inarticulate exclamation. He was thinking of the bill Kathleen had placed in his hands before she left him to-night.