She began to struggle with tears.
“My mother asked Mrs. Tregaskis to stay here with you and your sister, for to-night, instead of going back,” he told her straight.
“Why weren’t Frances and I asked if we would? Why is it arranged like that without telling me?” she demanded resentfully, her voice shaking.
“I don’t know. I suppose Mrs. Tregaskis thought you would not mind. Do you mind very much? If you do, I—I will see that you do go home to-night,” said Ludovic desperately.
She looked at him for an instant with a sort of wonder in her eyes that touched him acutely, and then broke into floods of tears.
Ludovic stood looking out of the window.
“She is utterly bewildered by that woman,” he told himself angrily, “and distrusts her instinctively. Heaven help the child! What will she do in Cornwall? That woman will break her. Dear, kind, wonderful Bertie, as my mother calls her! and those two—sensitive, highly-strung, who’ve probably lived in an atmosphere of understanding all their lives....”
He wondered for a wild instant if his mother could be persuaded to receive Rosamund and Frances as daughters. It hardly seemed probable, in view alone of her admiration for their self-appointed guardian. How could the charges of the benevolent cousin be reft from her under no pretext but their reluctance to be benefited, and Ludovic Argent’s passionate conviction that such beneficence would be the ruin of both?
“I’m not crying any more,” said Rosamund’s voice behind him, after a few moments.
He turned round.