She dropped his hand, her cheek whitening, her eyes fixed on his face. “Sherry!” she whispered.
He resumed his pacing. He was no longer scowling so heavily, but he looked suddenly much older and a little careworn. Suddenly he stopped and said crisply: “There’s only one thing for it. You have no mother to advise you, so it must be for mine to teach you what you should know. I should have put you in her hands at the outset! However, it is not too late: I shall take you down to Sheringham Place tomorrow. Tell your maid to pack your trunks in good time. I’ll give it out that you’re indisposed, and are gone into the country to recover your strength.”
“Sherry, no!” she panted. “You cannot be so cruel! I will not go! Your mother hates me — ”
“Stuff and nonsense!” he interrupted. “I tell you there’s nothing else to be done! I don’t say my mother ain’t a deuced silly woman, but she knows the way of the world, and she can — ”
She clutched at the lapels of his coat. “No, no, Sherry, don’t send me to her! To go home in disgrace — ”
“No one need know why you go. Why the devil should anyone wonder at your visiting your mother-in-law?”
“Cousin Jane will know, and all my friends there, and Lady Sheringham would tell everyone how wicked I have been!”
“Fudge! Who said you have been wicked, pray?”
“She will say so! She has said from the start that I had ruined your life, and now she will know it is true! Sherry, I had rather you killed me than sent me back like that!”
He removed her hands from his coat lapels, saying sternly: “Stop talking in that nonsensical fashion! I never heard such fustian in my life! Can you not see that I am doing what I ought to have done at the outset?”