“Thank you.” His eyes held hers with a certain mastery notwithstanding the humility of his address. “I have no intention of being offensive, I assure you. But I know—I can’t help knowing—that you have come through a pretty bad passage lately. I don’t want to ask anything about it. I only want to lend a hand to help you back to firm ground. Will you let me do this?”
“I have already accepted too much from you,” she said.
His look hardened. “I know. So you think. But you only see one point of view. I want you to realize that there is another. And if you leave Tetherstones now, well, you won’t have done all you might towards lessening what I believe you regard as an obligation.”
“What do you mean?” she said. “I thought you wanted me to go.”
“You thought wrong,” he returned with finality. “There is room for you here, and no reason whatever why you should go back to old Mrs. Trehearn, who is utterly unfit to look after you. Square says it would be madness. I beg you will not contemplate such a thing for a moment.”
He spoke with a force that he did not attempt to conceal, and she heard him with a strange mixture of surprise and doubt. She could not understand his insistence, but at the back of her mind she was oddly conscious of the fact that she lacked the strength to combat it.
Instinctively she sought to temporize. “It would be quite impossible for me to stay on here indefinitely. You have all been much too kind to me already, and I couldn’t—I really couldn’t.”
“Wait!” he said. “I haven’t suggested your doing that. I know you wouldn’t. What I do suggest is that you should stay here to convalesce while you are looking about for another post. Can’t you do that as easily here as with your brother in the North for instance?”
She smiled a little at his words, but she shook her head. “I can’t go on living on your kindness, and I have so very little money left. You must understand how impossible it would be.”
“I don’t understand,” he said doggedly. “You are a woman, and a woman has got to be protected when she is at the end of her resources. If you really want to make any return, you can do the farm accounts for Milly. She never had any aptitude for figures. But for heaven’s sake don’t talk of going until you are well! I won’t hear of it.”