“I dare say there will be a great deal of unpleasantness,” she pointed out, “and you would not wish to lay me open to anything of that nature, would you?”
No, indeed! He wished nothing less. She was right, as always. “Only, Deb, I should like to tell Max. You will not object to that?”
“Not in the least!” said Deborah, with quite unnecessary emphasis. “I wish you will tell him!”
“Oh, that is famous!” he said, catching her hand to his lips again. “I knew you could not mind Max’s knowing! In point of fact, he knows my feelings: he is a good fellow, Max! He always gets me out of scrapes, you know, and he don’t preach like my uncle. I always tell him things.”
“Oh!” said Miss Grantham.
“You will like him excessively,” his lordship assured her. “He is quite my best friend. He is one of my trustees, you know.”
“Oh!” said Miss Grantham again.
“Yes, and that is in part why I told him about you, my dearest. Well, I did hope that he might be brought to explain it all to my mother, but he would not. I was devilish angry with him at the time, but I dare say he was right. I told him I did not think that be would fail me, but he promised me that he did not mean to, so you will see that everything will come about famously!”
“He said that, did he?” said Miss Grantham, in an odd voice. “Indeed!”
His lordship’s blue eyes smiled into hers with such an unclouded look of innocence that she shut her lips tightly on the words that were hovering on the tip of her tongue. “Why do you say it like that, Deb? Don’t you like Max?”