The listener's sympathy happened to be with the old snook, but Sophie was not asking for an opinion.
"And do you mean to say," demanded the latter unexpectedly, "that you would rather live with your old aunt than in a sweet little house like this, with me?"
Miss Chard did not mean to say anything at all as far as her own affairs were concerned.
"Never mind about me, Sophie," was her reply. "Tell me some more of your interesting adventures, and how you came to live in this sweet little house."
Miss Cornell's glance shifted from her new friend. She looked out of the window, round the room, at the pictures on the wall, at the typewriter—anywhere but into the two clear wells of lilac light opposite her, as she answered:
"I rent it, of course. I told you, didn't I, that I am sekertary to a man down town, named Brookfield. He thinks the world of me, and gives me a big salary; and then I get other work from a man called Bramham. Oh, I have more to do than I want, and I really had to get help, so I wrote last week to a pal of mine up in Jo-burg, and told her to come and join me. She promised, and I expected her right up till to-day, when I got a telegram, if you please, to say that she'd got something better. Wasn't that a low-down trick? And after I had told Brookfield and Bramham and all! Brookie gave me the morning off to go and meet her, and I waited for the train and found she wasn't in it, and when I got back to the office there was the telegram! Fortunately Brookie was gone from the office when I got back, so he doesn't know that she hasn't come."
"But why should it matter to him and to the other man whether she comes or not?"
Again Miss Cornell's glance took flight.
"Because of the work, of course—there's such tons to do ... and I can't get through it all by myself."
Miss Chard watched her narrowly.