“No, ma dear, of cou’se not. Ah’m not saying anything whatever against you.”
“Except that I’m not good enough.... Now then, please, Mrs. Allanby, won’t you look at it this way for a minute? I could just as well marry Nick to-morrow——”
She stopped for an instant.
“And I will,” she went on, with downcast eyes, “if I can’t get you to help me.... But I want to make the best of it. I want us to—to have our chance....”
Mrs. Allanby was beaten. She saw that she couldn’t stop this thing. She had either to make a futile struggle which would certainly antagonise Nick, or she must, as Rosaleen said, make the best of a bad bargain.
“What did you think Ah would do?” she asked with a smothered sigh.
A flush came into Rosaleen’s pallid face. She had won! And at once she grew gentler.
“First of all, if you’d lend me enough money to send my sister and her family to Philadelphia, and get them settled there,” she said. “I don’t mean that I’m—trying to get rid of them, or anything like that. I want to help them always, and I’m sure Nick will, too. But it’s far better for them not to be here—for him not to see them again.”
“And what else?”
“And then ... if you’ll teach me things—show me how to dress, and to act and all that...? Before I marry Nick?”