"What on earth for?"
She clenched her hands. "Because I feel such a humbug coming on this way. Those other girls have worked and worked and been acting when I was at school. And now I step in front of them because—oh! you know what they think."
"I warned you of that before, you know."
"Yes; but I didn't realize then."
"And now, because a spiteful woman has said the obvious thing, you do. Oh, fie, Flash! This is weak-minded. I wish you knew her own history."
The girl turned to him, and even laid a timid hand on his sleeve.
"Sir Bryan, that's the mistake you make. You're always telling me—I mean in your letters—what a hypocrite this person or that is. But it doesn't make any difference to me. Of course, we understand one another, don't we?"
"I think we've made a start," Lumsden replied, in all seriousness.
"Yes, but those girls at the Dominion—some of them even younger than me. Think what I must seem to them. I can't go to them and say, 'Oh, believe me, it's not what you think.' And so the more they admire me, and the better I succeed, the greater scandal I shall be to them. And perhaps, some day——Oh! it seems such a responsibility, doesn't it?"
"Such a big one, that I advise you to put it out of your head."