“Oh! one has to. One can’t expect to be at Treliss for ever. It’s really bad for one to come here, because it always makes one discontented and unsettles one. Last year,” she smiled at the recollection, “was most unsettling.”
“Well,” he answered, “I’ve got to go back to the office, you know. It will do me good to have these days to remember.”
She was silent again; then the grasp on his arm tightened and she said—
“Oh! Mr. Maradick, I am so unhappy.”
He moved a little away from her. Here were more confidences coming! Why had all the world suddenly taken it into its incautious head to trust him with its secrets? He! Maradick! whom no one had ever dreamt of trusting with anything before?
“No, I don’t want to bother you. It won’t bother you, will it? Only it is such a rest and a comfort to be able to tell some one.” She spoke with a little catch in her voice, but she was thinking of the year before when she had trusted Captain Stanton, “dear old Reggie,” with similar confidences; and there had been Freddie Stapylton before that. Well, they had all been very nice about it, and she was sure that this big man with the brown neck and the curly hair would be just as nice.
“No, but you will be a friend of mine, won’t you?” she said. “A woman wants a friend, a good, sensible, strong friend to whom she can tell things, and I have nobody. It will be such a comfort if I can talk to you sometimes.”
“Please,” he said.
Providence seemed to have designed him as a kind of general nursemaid to a lot of irresponsible children.
“Ah! that’s good of you.” She gave a little sigh and stared out to sea. “Of course, I’m not complaining, other women have had far worse times, I know that; but it is the loneliness that hurts so. If there is only one person who understands it all it will make such a difference.”