“At least let me think it over. Let me finish the séances first,” Dolores plead, under the iron of his reminder. “I am exhausted each night when they are over and busy all the next day planning how best I may continue to entertain Your Lowness. A new undertaking might make me a failure in both.”
“There is something to that, unless——” He peered down at her suspiciously. “You’re not aspiring to outwit me by dragging out that life story indefinitely? The new job will tax your concentration, no doubt of it. And you do look all in after your regular evening stunt. All right. You may have one week after the end of the séances in which to make up such of your mind as I have not made up for you. But I say——”
“Yes, Your—— Yes, Pluto?”
“Aren’t you the dearest of griefs?” Although he laughed at the guile with which she had thanked him for his concession, he finished the warning sternly. “See you make your story snappy to-night. Don’t let these days of grace—or disgrace—make you as profuse of unessential details as you’ve been chary of the essentials past nights. If you do, you’ll find yourself talking against time with a vengeance. A vengeance—get that?”
Yes, she assured him, her voice a minor chord. And she would try to make it “snappy.”
A weakness for her? As compared with the strength he was showing to bend or break her to his will, that dread now seemed a hope.
CHAPTER XI
In the long moment during which Mrs. Cabot leveled her astonished stare upon the applicant as governess to her son, the girl did not breathe. When direct demand was made of her she could not speak.
“Tell me, is coming here your own idea? Or did my husband——?”
The smart vision in black and white interrupted herself by an over-shoulder invitation.