“He will have no choice,” said Rhoda, with decision.
“How obstinate you are,” complained Lady Sarah petulantly.
“I don’t think any one would act differently in my position,” said Rhoda.
“Then he is to lose your help, after having learnt to depend upon it?”
Rhoda, with a flush in her cheeks, and speaking in a trembling voice, rushed nervously at the opportunity thus presented:
“Well, why don’t you give him the help he wants yourself? It’s easy enough, and think how grateful he would be to you! When he prizes every word and look from you, it would make him so happy if you only would interest yourself in his collection. Do this, take care of his keys yourself, and whatever you don’t care to do, in the way of cataloguing and deciphering notes, and all that, give to me yourself, and let me do it for you instead of for him.”
Rhoda spoke earnestly, almost passionately; and Lady Sarah, who had begun by laughing a little at her proposition, listened to the end of her speech with an unusually grave face.
There was a short pause when Rhoda had finished; then the volatile lady recovered her spirits.
“I wish I could,” she said, with a pretty little shrug. “Believe me, I only wish I had been ‘built that way,’ and that I could play Joan to Sir Robert’s Darby in the proper manner. But I really couldn’t, you know. I might play at it for a week, but I couldn’t keep it up. We don’t like the same things, and it would be foolish of me to pretend to, because he’d find me out. Just think what a hash I should make of it if I were to attempt to criticise his Romney and his two Gainsboroughs, his Fra Angelico and his old engravings! To me they seem all dull and old-fashioned and over-rated altogether. I pretend sometimes to see their beauties, but it’s only pretence, and it bores me to pretend. Don’t you see?”
Rhoda was interested. If Lady Sarah had been acting before, she was obviously sincere now, and the girl felt for a moment rather sorry for the young married woman.