“I don’t think he ought to be allowed to make himself needlessly unhappy,” said Flora obstinately.
“You can’t prevent it.”
“I suppose it would be wrong to say that I don’t know where the Review is?”
“It would be foolish, which is worse,” said Lucilla curtly. Her un-moral pronouncement closed the discussion.
Flora, looking grave and unhappy, left the room, and presently returned with the instrument of destruction, as she evidently regarded the production.
“Let us hope that Canon Morchard will continue to be detained,” said Quentillian, not altogether ironically.
Flora made no reply.
In less than a quarter of an hour’s time, the Canon came back again, picked up the Review and made a careful scrutiny of the table of contents.
“The Myth of Self-Sacrifice?” he enunciated, with a strongly-enquiring inflexion in his tone, as though prepared to receive the writer’s instant assurance that he was not responsible for so strange a heading.
Owen desired to leave the room, but was mysteriously compelled to remain in it, glancing at intervals at the all-too expressive face of his reader.