“Yes, I can,” said Brian. “You go and rest.”
She obeyed him, thankful enough to have a moment's pause in which to think out the questions that came crowding into her mind. She hardly dared to think what Brian might be to her, for just now she needed him so sorely as friend and adviser, that to admit that other perception, which made her feel shy and constrained with him, would have left her still in her isolation. After all, he was a seven years' friend, no mere acquaintance, but an actual friend to whom she was her unreserved and perfectly natural self.
“Brian,” she said presently when he had finished her copying, “you don't think I'm bound to tell my father about this afternoon, do you?”
A burning, painful blush, the sort of blush that she never ought to have known, never could have known but for that shameful slander, spread over her face and neck as she spoke.
“Perhaps not,” said Brian, “since the man has been properly punished.”
“I think I hope it need never get round to him in any other way,” said Erica. “He would be so fearfully angry, and just now scarcely a day passes without bringing him some fresh worry.”
“When will the Pogson affair come on?”
“Oh! I don't know. Not just yet, I'm afraid. Things in the legal world always move at the rate of a fly in a glue pot.”
“What sort of man is Mr. Pogson?”
“He was in court today, a little, sleek, narrow-headed man with cold, gray eyes. I have been trying to put myself in his place, and realize the view he takes of things; but it is very, very hard. You don't know what it is to live in this house and see the awful harm his intolerance is bringing about.”