“Very well. I’ll do nothing without—telling you—first.”
That was the utmost concession she would make, and with that her godmother had to be content.
The same evening a letter in Lady Arabella’s spirited, angular handwriting sped on its way to Paris.
“If you’re not absolutely determined to ruin both your own and Magda’s lives, my dear Michael, put your pride and your ridiculous principles in your pocket and come back to England. I don’t happen to be a grandmother, but I’m quite old enough for the job, so you might pay my advice due respect by taking it.”
“I thought I was shelved altogether.”
Thus Dan Storran, rather crossly, when, a day or two later, he met Gillian by appointment for lunch at their favourite little restaurant in Soho. It was the first time she had been able to fix up a meeting with him since Magda’s return, as naturally his customary visits to Friars’ Holm were out of the question now.
“Well, you expected my time to be pretty well occupied the first week or two after Magda came back, didn’t you?” countered Gillian.
She smiled as she spoke and proceeded leisurely to draw off her gloves, while Storran signalled to a waiter.
She was really very glad to see him again. There was something so solid and dependable about him, and she felt it would be very comforting to confide in him her anxieties concerning Magda. Not that she anticipated he would have any particular compassion to bestow upon the latter. But she was femininely aware that inasmuch as Magda’s affairs were disturbing her peace of mind, he would listen to them with sympathetic attention and probably, out of the depths of his man’s consciousness, produce some quite sound and serviceable advice.
Being a wise woman, however, she did not launch out into immediate explanation, but waited for him to work off his own individual grumble at not having seen her recently, trusting to the perfectly cooked little lunch to exercise a tranquillising effect.