‘It is too much—far too much,’ says she, with an effort. ‘I don’t want so much as that. Fifty pounds a year would be enough; I am sure I could——’
She stops.
‘All that is beyond question,’ says the barrister coldly. ‘It was the Professor’s wish that you should have three hundred a year, and now that he is gone, there can be no further argument about it. He has no near relations so far as I can make out, so that there is no reason why you should not accept the money left to you by him. What I came to-day for was, not about the Professor’s gift to you, but to know what you intend to do with it.’
‘With it?’
‘Yes; what, in fact, are you going to do?’
‘What am I going to do?’ She looks up at him for the first time; a startled expression grows in her large dark eyes.
‘We all have a future before us,’ says Wyndham, ‘and you——’ He hesitates here, hardly knowing how to go on with those earnest eyes on his. ‘Of course I feel that, for the time being, I am in a sense bound to look after you, the Professor being an old friend of mine, and you——’ Again he stops. It seems impossible, indeed, to refer to that strange scene where he had had so prominent a part. ‘You will understand,’ says he, ‘that the Professor wished you to be placed in an assured position, and he left me to see to that.’
Here the girl makes a sharp movement of her hands descriptive of fear.
‘Naturally,’ says Wyndham, in answer to that swift movement of the pretty hands, ‘you object to my interference. But I must ask your forbearance in a matter that’—with a steady look at her—‘does not concern me in the slightest degree. You must really forgive me if I seem impatient; but, as you are aware, I know nothing about you, and to look after you as the Professor asked me to do requires thought. I am in complete ignorance about you. I can see that you are educated, but beyond that I know nothing.’
‘Ah! you know nothing indeed,’ says she quickly. ‘I am not educated. I know hardly anything. I am one of the most ignorant people alive.’