“I’ve something to tell her,” said Lalage; “something that I simply must tell to somebody.”
“I shall be delighted to listen.”
Lalage hesitated. She was drumming with her fingers on the edge of an empty flower pot as if she were playing a very rapid fantasia on the piano. This seemed to me a further symptom of nerve storm. I encouraged her to speak, as tactfully as I could.
“Has Miss Battersby,” I asked, “rebelled against her destiny?”
Lalage’s face suddenly puckered up in a very curious way. I should have supposed that she was on the verge of tears if there existed any record of her ever having shed tears. But no one, not even her most intimate friend ever heard of her crying; so I came to the conclusion that she wanted to laugh. I felt uneasy, for Lalage usually laughs without any preliminary puckerings of her face.
“Perhaps,” I said, “you’re thinking of the Archdeacon.”
“I am,” said Lalage.
She spoke with a kind of gulp which in the case of Hilda would certainly have been a premonitory symptom of tears.
“Did he make himself particularly disagreeable?”
Greatly to my relief Lalage laughed. It was an excited, unnatural laugh; and it was not very far from crying. Still it was a laugh.