Her voice had the same hard quality as she answered him. “No more than it does to most people when they lose their livelihood, I should say.”
But, strangely, her words gave him courage to pass the barrier. He spoke as one worker to another.
“What damnable luck!” he said.
Perhaps they were the most sincere words he had yet spoken, and they pierced her armour. He saw her chin quiver suddenly. She turned her face from him.
“I shall worry through,” she said, and her voice was brisk and business-like, wholly free from emotion. “I’m not afraid of that.”
But she was afraid, and he knew it. And something within him leapt to the knowledge. He knew that he had found the weak joint.
“Oh, there’s always a way out,” he said. “I’ve been in some tight corners myself, and I’ve proved that every time.” He broke off, with his eyes upon the rippling pathway of moonlight that stretched to their feet. Then, abruptly as she herself had spoken: “Is the Bishop going to do anything to make things easier?” he asked.
She made a small choking sound and produced a laugh. “Good heavens!” she said. “Do you really imagine I would let him if he would?”
“Why not?” said Montague boldly. “You’ve worked hard for him. If he has any sense of what is fitting, he will regard it in the light of a debt.”
“Will he?” said Frances Thorold sardonically.