“Um-hum. Then you’ll go just as soon as you can, of course? Eh?”
Bob hesitated. Townsend bit the end from a cigar.
“Nothing to keep you here now that this sickness is out the way, is there?” he inquired, carelessly.
“Why—why, no sir. I suppose not.”
“Glad to hear it. Looks like too good a chance for you to miss. Esther agrees with me there; don’t you, Esther?”
Esther nodded. “He is going, of course,” she said, quickly. “You are, aren’t you, Bob?”
Bob was in trouble. He had come there fully determined to make one more plea to Esther’s common sense and justice. He meant to make her understand how impossible it would be for him to leave her, how their separation would be precisely what her scheming uncle had hoped and for which he had planned. And now, in Foster Townsend’s presence, he could not tell her that. And this cross-examination was placing him in a very bad position. If he said that he was not going until she did the fat would be in the fire. If he said that he was going without her, she would accept that statement as the promise she had demanded. He did not know what to say.
“Bob,” persisted Esther, “I asked you a question. Didn’t you hear it? You are going abroad now—very soon—aren’t you?”
He set his teeth. He must make some sort of answer.
“I— Oh, I—I don’t know exactly what I shall do,” he stammered. “Grandfather’s sickness has—he isn’t very well and—and perhaps I shouldn’t leave him, for the present.”