"Of course you have," said John, admiringly. "And you will go, eh?"
"I'll see—I won't promise. Look here, Mr. Touchwood, I don't want to seem—what shall I call it—timid, but if I did go to France with you, I suppose you realize my mother would make such a fuss about it that people would end by really talking? Forgive my putting such an unpleasant idea into your innocent head; being your confidential secretary, I feel I oughtn't to let you run any risks. I don't suppose you care a bit how much people talk, and I'm sure I don't; at the same time I shouldn't like you to turn round on me and say I ought to have warned you."
"Talk!" John exclaimed. "The idea is preposterous. Talk! Good gracious me, can't I take my secretary abroad without bring accused of ulterior motives?"
"Now, don't work yourself into a state of wrath, or you won't be able to think of this terribly important last scene. Anyway, we sha'n't be going to France yet, and we can discuss the project more fully when the time comes."
John thought vaguely how well Miss Hamilton knew how to keep him unruffled, and with a grateful look—or what was meant to be a grateful look, though she blushed unaccountably when he gave it—he concentrated upon the site of his heroine's scaffold.
During March the weather was so bright and exhilarating that John and his secretary took many walks together on Hampstead Heath; they also often went to town, and John derived much pleasure from discussing various business affairs with her clerical support; he found that it helped considerably when dealing with the manager of a film company to be able to say "Will you make a note of that, please, Miss Hamilton?" The only place, in fact, to which John did not take her was his club, and that was only because he was not allowed to introduce ladies there.
"A rather mediæval restriction," he observed one day to a group assembled in the smoking-room.
"There was a time, Touchwood, when you used to take refuge here from your leading ladies," a bachelor member chuckled.
"But nowadays Touchwood has followed Adam with the rest of us," put in another.
"What's that?" said John, sharply.