“Now I should like to know,” she said, looking at him with a quiet smile, “what you are doing here? It is not a particularly inspiring neighbourhood for walking about by yourself.”
“I plead guilty, Miss Pellissier,” he answered at once. “I saw you go into that place, and I have been waiting for you ever since.”
“I am not sure whether I feel inclined to scold or thank you,” she declared. “I think as I feel in a good humour it must be the latter.”
He faced her doggedly.
“Miss Pellissier,” he said, “I am going to take a liberty.”
“You alarm me,” she murmured, smiling.
“Don’t think that I have been playing the spy upon you,” he continued. “Neither Sydney nor I would think of such a thing. But we can’t help noticing. You have been going out every morning, and coming home late—tired out—too tired to come down to dinner. Forgive me, but you have been looking, have you not, for some employment?”
“Quite true!” she answered. “I have found out at last what a useless person I am—from a utilitarian point of view. It has been very humiliating.”
“And that, I suppose,” he said, waving his stick towards Mr. Earles’ office, “was your last resource.”
“It certainly was,” she admitted. “I changed my last shilling yesterday.”