"You think, then," she said, after what seemed to be a long pause, "that you might get—turned out, if you said anything to my grandfather about Hubert? You know enough for that?"
"I suppose I know pretty nearly everything there is to know now," he replied sulkily.
She looked at him quickly, and then turned her eyes away again. "Uncle Joe told you?" she asked.
With some vague idea of loyalty in his mind, Arthur tried to exculpate his uncle by saying, "Partly, yes; but he had nothing to do with the suggestion of my speaking to Mr Kenyon about Hubert."
"No, of course not," Eleanor said; "and in any case you've decided not to."
He thought there was still a hint of question in her tone, as if she still hoped that he might be persuaded to champion his cousin's cause; and he grasped the opportunity to get back to the point she had, as he believed, deliberately passed by.
"You admit that I shan't do any good to Hubert," he said. "Why are you so anxious that I should get myself into trouble by interfering—unless it is that you want to be rid of me? Because if that's all, I can go at any time of my own free will."
"I don't want you to go," she said coldly.
"Then why are you so keen on—on my taking the chance of offending Mr Kenyon?" he insisted.
She faced him with a cool, steady stare. "You can't seriously believe," she said, "that I should be so mean and small as to persuade you into this for any purely selfish purpose of my own? Why, none of them would be as paltry as that."