But Miss Gregson did not rise to the occasion. Neither did she smile.
"How do you think the child is to live?" she asked quietly.
"I'm quite happy about that. No one can accuse me of sending her out into the world unprepared. Even you must acknowledge after hearing her sing at the concert, that I have fitted her for her future work. She will be able to give singing lessons, and of course I shall make her a present of money before she leaves."
Miss Gregson was silent.
Sheila laughed.
"I see you disapprove of me utterly. I'm a wretch, you think."
Then her companion put on her spectacles and faced her.
"I must tell you the truth at all costs," she said quietly, "and that is that I cannot think how anyone calling herself a Christian could possibly do such a cruel thing as you contemplate doing. It would have been far better to have left her as you found her, to have sent her to the hospital when she was taken ill on your doorstep, and when she recovered to have tried to set her up in some good business. But to take the poor girl out of her proper station of life, to shower gifts upon her, to teach her to grow dependent on comforts and luxuries—quite unnecessary luxuries—and then to cast her adrift is to my mind the most un-Christian cruel thing you could possibly do."
"But then I don't profess to be a Christian, you see," said Sheila.
Miss Gregson looked straight at her former pupil. All fear of her, all nervousness in speaking to her, had fled. She was too aghast at the prospect held out for Meg to fear.