"Now I am going to ask you something," she went on. "You will not be angry with me, I am sure. Do you think that a girl of Isobel's age and appearance is in her proper place in bachelor quarters, living with three young men?"
"I do not," I admitted. "I look upon it as a most regrettable necessity. Still, you must not make it sound worse than it is. We have a housekeeper who is the very essence of respectability, and Isobel is under her care."
"I want to make it no longer a necessity," Lady Delahaye said, smiling. "I want to relieve you and your conscience at the same time of a very awkward incubus. Listen! This is what I propose. Let Isobel come to me for a year! I shall treat her as my own daughter. She will have plenty of amusement. There are the theatres, and no end of scratch entertainments where one can take a girl of her age who is too young for society. She will mix with young people of her own age, she will have every advantage which, to speak frankly, must be denied to her in her present position. At the end of that year I shall tell her her history. It is a sad and a miserable one. You may as well know that now. She can then take her choice of the convent, or any other mode of life which between us we can make possible for her. And I am very much inclined to believe, Arnold, that she will choose the convent."
"Is there any real reason, Lady Delahaye?" I asked, "why you should not tell me now what you propose to tell Isobel in a year's time? There have been so many mysterious circumstances in connection with this affair that it is hard to come to any decision when one is ignorant of so much."
"There are reasons—grave reasons—why I can tell you nothing," she answered. "Indeed, I would like to, Arnold," she continued earnestly, "but my position is a very difficult one. I think that you might trust me a little."
"I am sure that you wish to do what is best," I said, a little awkwardly, "but you must see that my position also is a little difficult. I, too, am under a promise!"
Her eyes flashed indignantly.
"To the man who killed my husband! The man whom you are shielding!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I think that you might at least have the grace to leave him out of the conversation."
"I have never introduced him," I answered. "I do not wish to do so. As to shielding him, I have not the slightest idea as to his whereabouts. Be reasonable, Lady Delahaye. I——"
"Reasonable," she interrupted. "That is what I want you to be! Ask yourself a plain question. Which is the more fitting place for her—my house, or your chambers?"