Hal grasped the situation at once, and instead of enlightening her concerning her own identity, said casually:
“There’s another young man as well, is there?”
“There is so. A pawnbroker I should take him to be, who wears the jewellery left in his care on his person for safety. As a matter of fact, I believe he is a South African millionaire. He brought her home one day, and Blakde—that’s the housekeeper’s husband down below—recognised him. He was out in South Africa in the war, and he saw him then.”
Hal drummed on the table with her fingers to assume nonchalance.
“Does Miss Hayward know?”
“Know? Of course she doesn’t. How should she know, particularly if that artful monkey did not want her to? I don’t know where the poor sick man would be now but for me. She’s always off somewhere—that minx—and I rush back from my music pupils, because I can’t rest for the thought of him here all alone. I’ve given one up, who wanted a lesson at half-past four every day. That’s the time he needs his tea.”
“Why do you do all this for him?” Hal found herself asking, a little unaccountably. “He is nothing to you, is he—no relation, I mean?”
“Nothing to me!… Oh, isn’t he though! I’d like to know what is anything, if he’s nothing?”
She rattled the cups and saucers a little restlessly, and Hal, with growing interest, waited for her to go on.
“Before I knew him, I was nothing in the world but a door with a letter on it, as I’ve just told you. That’s all I stood for, a mere letter of the alphabet who paid a monthly rent. I told him so, when I first came across, and he said, ‘Well, I’m very glad they didn’t leave G out of the alphabet.’ That’s all.”