“So will this probably. What made you venture inside?”
“Isn’t the reason obvious?” he returned. “I thought I had prepared you for my visit at tea. It wasn’t possible for us to say good-bye like that. I’m sorry I got you into that mess.”
“You didn’t,” Prudence assured him gently. “I knew how it would be. I’m not regretting—anything. Stinging nettles cease to hurt when the rash subsides. William is furious. We don’t speak.”
“That must be rather a relief for you.”
She dimpled suddenly.
“He doesn’t think so. When I apologise I am to be taken into favour again. So, if he keeps to that, it is likely to be many years before we interchange remarks.”
“What an egregious ass he is,” Steele commented. “Never mind that now. We don’t want to discuss him. I came to-night to beg a favour. Will you write to me sometimes? ... and may I write? I don’t want to lose touch altogether.”
“I can’t promise that,” she said, and fingered a rosebud below her window, snapping its stem in nervous preoccupation. “All our letters go into a box at the post office and are sorted before we receive them. They would not allow me to correspond with you.”
“Could we not arrange a little deception,” he suggested, “by means of which you could collect your own letters from the post office?”
But this idea did not commend itself to Prudence. She might be a rebel, but she was honest, as courageous people usually are; anything in the nature of deceit repelled her. “I should not care to do that,” she said. Her answer pleased Steele, although it defeated his purpose. He had hoped to follow up this pleasant friendship begun under such unusual and difficult conditions. It was the quality of conspiracy and quick intimacy which made the acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to him. He was more than half in love with her already; and it galled him to reflect that with his present uncertain prospects he was no match for this daughter of a wealthy man. He could not have afforded to marry had other conditions proved favourable, which they did not: Mr Graynor would scarcely have welcomed a son-in-law with a salary of under two hundred a year.