“Can’t you understand that she’s nearly off her head with worrying about you?” Jervaise interrupted.
“No, I can’t,” Brenda returned. “If it had been Olive, I could. But I should have thought they would all have been jolly glad to see the last of me. They’ve always given me that impression, anyhow.”
“Not in this way,” her brother grumbled.
“What do you mean by that exactly?” Anne asked with a great seriousness.
I think Jervaise was beginning to lose his nerve. He was balanced so dangerously between the anxiety to maintain the respectability of the Jervaises and his passion, or whatever it was, for Anne. Such, at least, was my inference; although how he could possibly reconcile his two devotions I could not imagine, unless his intentions with regard to Anne were frankly shameful. And Jervaise must, indeed, be an even grosser fool than I supposed him to be if he could believe for one instant that Anne was the sort of woman who would stoop to a common intrigue with him. For it could be nothing more than that. If they loved each other, they could do no less than follow the shining example of Brenda and Anne’s brother. I could see Anne doing that, and with a still more daring spirit than the other couple had so far displayed. I could not see her as Frank Jervaise’s mistress. Moreover, I could not believe now, even after that morning’s scene in the wood, that she really cared for him. If she did, she must have been an actress of genius, since, so far as I had been able to observe, her attitude towards him during the last half-hour had most nearly approached one of slightly amused contempt.
Jervaise’s evident perplexity was notably aggravated by Anne’s question.
“Well, naturally, my father and mother don’t want an open scandal,” he said irritably.
“But why a scandal?” asked Anne. “If Arthur and Brenda were married and went to Canada?”
“I don’t say that I think it would be a scandal,” he said. “I’m only telling you the way that they’d certainly see it. It might have been different if your brother had never been in our service. You must see that. We know, of course, but other people don’t, and we shall never be able to explain to them. People like the Turnbulls and the Atkinsons and all that lot will say that Brenda eloped with the chauffeur. It’s no good beating about the bush—that’s the plain fact we’ve got to face.”
“Then, hadn’t we better face it?” Anne returned with a flash of indignation. “Or do you think you can persuade Arthur to go back to Canada, alone?”