Isobel looked at me. Her mouth, which a few minutes before had been curved with smiles, was straight now, and resolutely set. She was distinctly paler, and her manner seemed to have acquired a new gravity. I must confess that my first impulse was one of relief. Isobel had not found Lady Delahaye's offer, then, so wonderfully attractive.
"Do you mind coming home now, Arnold?" she asked. "I did not know that it was so late."
I saw Lady Delahaye's face darken at her simple use of my Christian name, and the touch of her fingers upon my arm. Arthur heard our voices, and came to us at once. So we took leave of our hostess, and turned homewards.
For a long time we walked almost in silence. Then Isobel turned towards me with a new gravity in her face, and an unusual hesitation in her tone.
"Arnold," she said, "Lady Delahaye has been pointing out to me one or two things which I had not thought of before. I suppose she meant to be kind. I suppose it is right that I should know. But——" her voice trembled—"I wish she had not told me."
"Lady Delahaye is an interfering old cat!" Arthur exclaimed viciously. "Don't take any notice of her, Isobel."
"But I must know," she answered, "whether the things which she said were true."
"They were probably exaggerations," I said cheerfully; "but let us hear them, at any rate."
"She said," Isobel continued, looking steadily in front of her, "that you were all three very poor indeed, and that I had no right to come and live with you, and make you poorer still, when I had a home offered me elsewhere. She said that I should disturb your whole life, that you would have to give up many things which were a pleasure to you, and you would not be able to succeed so well with your work, as you would have to write altogether for money. And she said that I should be grown up soon, and ought to live where there are women; and when I told her about Mrs. Burdett she laughed unpleasantly, and said that she did not count at all. And that is why—she wants me—to go there!"
Again the shadow of tragedy gleamed in the child's white face. Her face was strained, her eyes had lost the deep softness of their colouring, and there lurked once more in their depths the terror of nameless things. To me the sight of her like this was so piteous that I wasted not a moment in endeavouring to reassure her.