‘I dare say your plan is the best. How long has Miss Coningham been here?’
‘About ten days, I think.’
He looked thoughtful and made no answer.
‘I see, you are afraid of my falling in love with her again,’ I said. ‘I confess I like her much better than I did, but I am not quite sure about her yet. She is very bewitching anyhow, and a little more might make me lose my heart to her. The evident dislike she has to Brotherton would of itself recommend her to any friend of yours or mine.’
He turned his face away.
‘Do not be anxious about me,’ I went on. ‘The first shadowy conviction of any untruthfulness in her, if not sufficient to change my feelings at once, would at once initiate a backward movement in them.’
He kept his face turned away, and I was perplexed. After a few moments of silence, he turned it towards me again, as if relieved by some resolution suddenly formed, and said with a smile under a still clouded brow,
‘Well, old fellow, we’ll see. It’ll all come right, I dare say. Write your note early, and we’ll follow it. How glad I shall be to have a glimpse of that blessed mother of mine without her attendant dragon!’
‘For God’s sake don’t talk of your father so! Surely, after all, he is a good man!’
‘Then I want a new reading of the word.’