Another cross-examination! Wasn’t the world large enough for so small a little figure to escape notice?
“Dear old Simpky,” she said, with that wide-eyed candor of hers, “I’m in such a hurry. With any luck I shall just be able to catch the bus that will take me home to lunch.”
But Simpkins put his back against the door. “No,” he said. “Not like that. Even if I’ve lost yer, I love yer, and it’s my job to see you don’t come to no ’arm. You’ve got to tell me what you’re doing.”
There was something in the man’s eyes and in the whiteness of his face that warned Lola immediately of the need to be careful. Her mother had said that Simpkins was a good man with something of ecstasy in his nature, and she guessed intuitively that the latter might take the form eventually, in his ignorance and his love, of a dangerous watchfulness. So she was very patient and quiet and commonplace, remembering a similar scene which had taken place with Treadwell outside Mrs. Rumbold’s battered house.
“I went to a concert with a married friend of mine. Lady Feo gave me the frock. It’s very kind of you to worry, Simpky. And now, please——”
And after a moment’s hesitation Simpkins opened the door and with a curious dignity gave the girl her freedom. He loved her and believed in her. She was Lola and she was good, and but for some catastrophic accident she might be engaged to be married to him.
But Lola didn’t go immediately. She turned round and put her hand on the valet’s arm. “What are you going to do?” she asked, affectionately concerned.
“There isn’t anything for me to do,” he said, “now.”
“Come home with me.”
But he shook his head. “I couldn’t,” he said. “Your father is a friend of mine and might slap me on the back and tell me to go on ’oping—and there isn’t any—is there?”