“I wish we had never come to this place,” he said.
“Then let us go away from it,” answered Dorothy, “before it is too late.”
Roden looked at her in surprise. Did she expect him to go away now from Mrs. Vansittart? He knew, of course, that Dorothy and the world always expected too much from him.
“Before it is too late. What do you mean?” he asked, still thinking of Mrs. Vansittart.
“Before the Malgamite scheme is exposed,” replied Dorothy, bluntly. And, to her surprise, he laughed.
“I thought you meant something else,” he said. “The Malgamite scheme can look after itself. Von Holzen is the cleverest man I know, and he knows what he is doing. I thought you meant Mrs. Vansittart—were thinking of her.”
“No, I was not thinking of Mrs. Vansittart.”
“Not worth thinking about,” suggested Roden, adhering to his method of laughing for fear of being laughed at, which is common enough in very young men; but Roden should have outgrown it by this time.
“Not seriously.”
“What do you mean, Dorothy?”