Maradick was silent.
“You mustn’t, please, think that I mean you to spy in any way,” she continued. “I don’t want you to tell me anything. I shall never ask you, and you need never say anything to me about it. It is only that I shall know that there is some one there if he gets into a mess and I shall know that he’s all right.” She paused again, and then went on gently—
“You mustn’t think it funny of me to speak to you like this when I know you so slightly. At my age one judges people quickly, and I don’t want to waste time. I’m asking a good deal of you, perhaps; I don’t know, but I think it would have happened in any case whether I had spoken or no. And then you will gain something, you know. No one can be with Tony—get to know him and be a friend of his—without gaining. He’s a very magical person.”
Maradick looked down on the ground. He knew quite well that he would have done whatever Lady Gale had asked him to do. She had seemed to him since he had first seen her something very beautiful and even wonderful, and he felt proud and grateful that she had trusted him like that.
“It’s very good of you, Lady Gale,” he said; “I will certainly be a friend of Tony’s, if that is what you want me to do. He is a delightful fellow, much too delightful, I am afraid, to have anything much to do with a dull, middle-aged duffer like myself. I must wake up and shake some of the dust off.”
She smiled. “Thank you; you don’t know how grateful I am to you for taking an interest in him. I shall feel ever so much safer.”
And then the door opened and Tony came in. He crossed over to her and said eagerly, “Mother, the Lesters are here. Came this afternoon. They’re coming up in a minute; isn’t it splendid!”
“Oh, I am glad—not too loud, Tony, you’ll disturb the bridge. How splendid they’re coming; Mildred said something in town about possibly coming down in the car.”
“He’s the author-fellow, you know,” said Tony, turning round to Maradick. “You were reading ‘To Paradise’ yesterday; I saw you with it. His books are better than himself. But she’s simply ripping; the best fun you ever saw in your life.”
That Maradick should feel any interest in meeting a novelist was a new experience. He had formerly considered them, as a class, untidy both in morals and dress, and had decidedly preferred City men. But he liked the book.