“It will. It will if he learns of it. But he mustn’t.”
“Mustn’t, Eleanor? What other way is there?”
“Mr. Barnes—” began the girl.
The aunt glanced swiftly at the stranger again. He met her eyes steadily—with perhaps the slightest, the very slightest, gallant lowering of them in respectful deference to her age.
“I fail to see how a stranger may assist in so personal a matter,” she observed icily.
“If you will let me explain,” said Barnes. “It seems to me that no one but a stranger can help. I’ve ventured to suggest that I be allowed to ward off the blow; that I be allowed to do this in the only possible way now open—by impersonating the boy.”
The girl straightened herself and waited. Barnes put down his portfolio and accepted the chair which had lately been offered him. Aunt Philomela sat up as stiffly as though suddenly galvanized.
“You—you actually seriously propose such—such base trickery?” she stammered.
“With the most honest intentions in the world,” nodded Barnes.
“You are bold and impertinent, sir!”