"Yes——" Arnim hesitated, as though on the point of making some remark, and then added innocently enough, "Perhaps you would have found it less of a drudgery than the usual routine, but scarcely remunerative enough."
Miles glanced uneasily at his brother-in-law, and then subsided, to all appearance suppressed, but Nora, who walked on his other side, caught a fleeting grimace, which was all too easy to translate into Miles's vernacular. She was secretly thankful when her husband had seen them both into a cab and closed the door.
"I shall be home late to-night," he said. "Don't stay up for me, dear, if you are tired."
He waited on the pavement until they drove off, and Nora's eyes sought to convey to him an unusual tenderness. There was indeed something remorseful and apologetic in her manner which she herself could hardly have explained. For the first time she was conscious of being almost glad that he was not coming home, and her sense of relief when at length the droschke actually started on its way was so keen that she felt herself guilty of disloyalty. "It is only the first evening," she thought in self-defence. "They are such strangers to each other. Wolff might not understand Miles. It will be better when they know each other and are friends."
"Where is Wolff to-night?" Miles inquired, breaking in upon her troubled thoughts. "Any spree on?"
"It is his Kriegsspiel night," Nora answered. "He has to go."
Miles chuckled sceptically.
"Rather good for us, anyhow," he said. "We can talk so much better, can't we?"
Nora was thankful for the half-darkness. The angry colour had rushed to her cheeks. And yet her brother's words, tacitly placing Wolff in the position of an outsider as they did, were little more than a brutalised edition of her own thoughts.
"I hate it when he is not at home," she said loyally. "Of course, to-night it is different, but as a rule it is very lonely without him."