“I believe in Michael,” replied Gillian steadily. “He’s made mistakes. People in love do. But when he knows all that Magda has endured—for his sake, really—why, he’ll come back. I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t know, my dear. I was sure he would come back within six months. But, you see, I was wrong. Men are kittle cattle—and often very slow to arrive at the intrinsic value and significance of things. A woman jumps to it while a man is crawling round on his hands and knees in the dark, looking for it with a match.”
Gillian laughed and got up to go, and Lady Arabella—whose rheumatism was quite real at the moment—rose rather painfully and hobbled down the room beside her, her thin, delicate old hand resting on the silver knob of a tall, ebony walking-stick.
“Now, remember,” urged Gillian. “Magda mustn’t have the least suspicion Michael may be coming back—or she’d be off into her slums before you could stop her. Whatever happens, you’ve got to prevent her rushing back to the Sisters of Penitence.”
“Only over my dead body, my dear,” Lady Arabella assured her determinedly. “She shan’t go any other way.”
So Gillian returned to Friars’ Holm bearing with her a note from Lady Arabella in which she asked her god-daughter to pay her a visit. In it, however, the wily old lady made no mention of her further idea of going to Harrogate, lest it should militate against an acceptance of the invitation. Magda demurred a little at first, but Gillian, suddenly endowed with diplomacy worthy of a Machiavelli, pointed out that if she really had any intention of ultimately withdrawing into a community the least she could do was to give her godmother the happiness of spending a few days with her.
“She will only urge me to give up the idea all the time,” protested Magda. “And I’ve quite made up my mind. The sooner I can get away from—from everything”—looking round her with desperate, haunted eyes—“the better it will be.”
Gillian’s impulse to combat her decision to rejoin the sisterhood died on her lips stillborn. It was useless to argue the matter. There was only one person in the world who could save Magda from herself, and that was Michael. The main point was to concentrate on getting him back to England, rather than waste her energies upon what she knew beforehand must prove a fruitless argument.
“I’ll go to Marraine for a couple of nights, anyway,” said Magda at last. “After that, I want to make arrangements for my reception into the sisterhood.”
Gillian returned no answer. She felt her heart contract at the quiet decision in Magda’s voice, but she pinned her faith on Lady Arabella’s ability to hold her, somehow, till she herself had accomplished her errand to Paris.