“I’ll help you first to repair the damage I did,” he said.
She replied that he needn’t.
He said that he wanted to, and must; and because he was just the sort of young man he was, and because she had the intelligence to see it, she admitted him then and there to a sort of friendship. After the bookcase was set upright again, and all the books restored to order, they sat down, one on either side of the library table, in the most natural way in the world.
“You’d make a wonderfully good nurse,” he observed.
“I’m afraid not,” she answered, smiling again. “I shouldn’t like it at all!”
“But you seem to know a good deal about that sort of thing,” he went on. “It must interest you.”
She made no reply, and for a moment he feared she had thought him unduly curious—impertinent, perhaps; but there was no sign of displeasure in her face. She was looking thoughtfully before her, grave, serene, almost as if she had not heard him. Suddenly he fancied he understood.
“Of course!” he said to himself. “She’s in love with Hunter, and naturally she takes an interest in his work. That’s why she’s here, filling a servant’s place, simply so that she can be near him!”
There was no reason why this should make him indignant, yet, instead of being touched by the idea of such devotion, he was angry and disappointed.
“I wonder what Mrs. Carew thinks of it!” he pursued. “She probably thinks that this girl isn’t good enough for her precious Noel. She would object to such a marriage; or perhaps she doesn’t know what the girl is. Perhaps he doesn’t know, either. I may be the only one who has guessed her secret.”