“Do you mean—” began the girl hotly.
“Oh, of course they liked having you,”—Mrs Leslie felt that she had gone rather far—“but I tell you honestly that I suspect it was more because you were young and pretty, and perhaps because it amused them to see you taking life so seriously, than on account of your—what am I to call it—profession?”
“Call it what you like,” said Claudia proudly, and staring in front of her. “We are not likely to agree in the view we take of it. I have been brought up to think that idleness is not the desirable element in a woman’s life which you all seem to consider it. As for Arthur, if he is ashamed of it for his wife, he has changed very much since he talked of it a few weeks ago.”
She made her little speech quietly and well, though her voice trembled as she ended, because she could not but feel that he had changed.
“Settle that between you,” said Mrs Leslie, in a light tone. “It doesn’t seem to me at all his line.”
When she could get hold of her brother, she attacked him. “Arthur, why didn’t you give me a hint? What extraordinary craze is this of Claudia’s? Do you know that she calls herself a landscape gardener?” He frowned.
“Has she gone back to that rubbish? I thought it was at an end. Though, mind you, there was something very engaging in the serious view she took of her duties. She hadn’t a thought to fling in another direction.”
“Absurd! And you encouraged it?”
“It was the only way of getting at her. Besides, I knew if once I made her care, I could stop it, and stopped it I have, unless you have rubbed her the wrong way again. How did you come upon it?”
“Helen Arbuthnot alluded to the Thornbury trees. I can’t think why Helen has come here now,” said Mrs Leslie impatiently. “I wish she were married and done with.” Fenwick made no answer. Possibly he had not heard.