"I want you to go away from here with me at once."
"To go away from here! O no. Connu, my dear Mr. Butler; I see the whole of the play. This is not your own business at all, dear sir. You dance, and kick your legs and swing your arms very well; but you are a puppet, and the gentleman who pulls the strings lives over yonder;" and she pointed with her umbrella to Redmoor House.
"I can't make out what you mean."
"O yes, you can. 'A master I have, and I am his man.' You are Sir Charles Mitford's man, Mr. Butler; and he has set you on to tell me that I must leave this place and rid him of my influence. Now, you may go back to Sir Charles Mitford, your master, and tell him that I set him utterly at defiance; that I won't move, and that he can't make me. Do you hear that, my dear Mr. Butler?"
She had risen from her seat, and stood erect before him, looking very grand and savage. Her companion knew that the success of his scheme depended wholly upon the manner in which he carried out the next move, and accordingly he threw all his power into the acting of it.
"You're one of those who answer their own questions, I see," said he with perfect calmness. "I've met lots o' that sort in my travels, and I never found 'em do so much good as those that waited. All you've been saying's Greek to me. Who's Sir Charles Mitford? I've heard of him, of course, as the swell that lives in that house. They've never done talking of him at the Mitford Arms and all about there. But what's he to do with you? I suppose it don't matter to him who his friends' governesses is. He's not sweet on you, is he? If so, he wouldn't want you to go away. And what's he to do with me? and how's he likely to hear of my having been in the place? I haven't left my card upon him, I promise you," said Mr. Effingham with a grim humour.
Miss Gillespie looked at him hard, very hard. But his perfect command of feature had often stood Mr. Effingham in good stead, and it did not desert him now. The saucy laughter on his lips corresponded with the easy bantering tone of his voice; he sat swinging his legs and sucking his stick, the incarnation of insolence. So far he was triumphant.
She waited a minute or two, biting her lips, and turning her plans in her mind. Then she said, "Granting what you say--and it was rather a preposterous proposition of mine, I admit--you are still a puppet in somebody's hands. You had no knowledge of my previous life, and yet you come to me and say I must come away at once with you. Why must I come away?"
"Because you're wanted."
"And by whom?"