"I'm going to 'Wake-Robin; first. By next week my aerodrome will be finished. My machine is promised by the end of May. They're sending a perfectly reliable mechanician—"
"Reliable—in the air! Imagine it!"
"—and I'll be flying in a month."
The good lady rose and Hermia watched her with an expression in which relief and guilt were strangely mingled. Her conscience always smote her after one of her declarations of independence to her Aunt, whose mildness and ineptitude in the unequal struggle always left the girl with an unpleasant sense of having taken a mean advantage of a helpless adversary. To Hermia Mrs. Westfield's greatest effectiveness was when she was most ineffectual.
"There's nothing more for me to say, I suppose," said Mrs. Westfield.
"Nothing except that you approve," pleaded her niece wistfully.
"I'll never do that," icily. "I don't approve of you at all. Why should I mince matters? You're gradually alienating me, Hermia—cutting yourself off from the few blood relations you have on earth."
"From Millicent and Theodore? I thought that Milly fairly doted on me—"
Mrs. Westfield stammered helplessly.
"It's I—I who object. I don't like your friends. I don't think I would be doing my duty to their sainted father if—"