He put on his glasses and coughed, a sure sign he was embarrassed. She laughed.
“And of course there’s no doubt that I should disgrace you. I probably shall now as a matter of fact. Mabel will be rather sorry,” she went on, pensively. “She likes me to be there at night in case she gets frightened. She told me once that the only reason she ever went wrong was because she was frightened to sleep alone. She was married to a commercial traveler, who, of course, was just the worst person she could have married, because he was always leaving her alone. Poor Mabel!”
Philip took her hand again and said in a tone of voice which she resented as adumbrating already, however faintly, a hint of ownership:
“Sylvia dear, you won’t talk so freely as that in the school, will you? Promise me you won’t.”
“But it used to amuse you when I talked like that,” she said. “You mustn’t think now that you’ve got the right to lecture me.”
“My dear child, it doesn’t matter what you say to me; I understand. But some people might not.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she almost sighed.
CHAPTER VI
MISS ASHLEY’S school for young ladies, situated in its own grounds on Campden Hill, was considered one of the best in England; a day or two after they got back from Oxford, Philip announced to Sylvia that he was glad to say Miss Ashley would take her as a pupil. She was a friend of his family; but he had sworn her to secrecy, and it had been decided between them that Sylvia should be supposed to be an orphan educated until now in France.
“Mayn’t I tell the other girls that I’ve been an odalisque?” Sylvia asked.