“I still don’t understand altogether. How can you explain to the Canon that this lady isn’t there, when he goes by appointment to see her?”
“I shall have made a mistake. I’m keeping his engagements written down for him. And I shall have written down this engagement for Saturday, instead of for Friday. He will go exactly one day too late.”
“Flora, you can’t do it.”
She lifted tired eyes to his face, overwrought to the point of fanaticism.
“Don’t waste time. Only tell me if I can count on you. All I want you to do is to keep Father out, with you, tomorrow morning. I shall be at Mrs. Carey’s at half-past ten and I promise to be back here before one o’clock.”
“Suppose this lady is not what you think her, and you find that she will be—discreet—is your father to be disappointed of his hopes of seeing her?”
“I may be able to arrange something. Perhaps she’d put off going to Scotland, and see him on Saturday after all. It would be all right then, wouldn’t it? Or I might even be able to tell her the whole thing,” said Flora wistfully. “It isn’t very likely, though.”
He did not think that it was.
“You see, you didn’t see her original letter, and I did. It was the letter of a very hysterical person. She might say almost anything, I imagine and—well, there’s a good deal that mustn’t be said, isn’t there?”
It was incontrovertible, but Quentillian said roughly: