“We must tell her things!” cried Ishbel. “We must make her understand!”
“You couldn’t make that baby understand anything. Besides, when it came to the point, you couldn’t do it. It’s all very well to talk of enlightening girls about anything, but personally I’ve never encountered any one that had the nerve to do it. Girls in our class absorb knowledge as they grow up; instincts help; but who ever told us anything? Well, here is my plan, since you two appear to have none. We shall tell her that France is dangerous, that when he drinks he is quite mad and may kill her. She’s game, but there are certain female fears that always can be worked on. And repugnances. We will draw horrid pictures of what he looks like when he’s drunk —”
“Right you are!” cried Herbert. “No decent girl will elect to live with a common drunkard, particularly when she doesn’t love him. And if Mrs. Winstone can’t be brought round, one of you will take her in?”
“If she’ll come. Perhaps she would wish to go back to her mother. She hasn’t a penny of her own, and apparently has never heard of the self-supporting woman. But it might be managed somehow.”
“It must!” cried Ishbel. “We will hide her alternately.”
“But to what end? France might be exasperated to the point of wishing to rid himself of her, but what ground for divorce? We travel in a circle as far as Nigel is concerned.”
“I have it!” cried Nigel, whose fine imagination was fired by the most stimulative of all passions. “Give me the chance to make her love me, and then take her to America and get a divorce there. Thank heaven I have a little something of my own, and I can earn more. We’ll stay in America until the storm blows over —”
“American divorces are not legal in England —”
“Then I’ll stay there forever. Promise. Promise.”
“Not bad,” said Mrs. Herbert. “You take her in, Ishbel, and I’ll take her over. Mr. Jones would probably not consent to your desertion—a divorce must take time, even in the United States, and you have another sister to marry off next season —”