"He could ruin me."
Shelby readily pictured a few ruins of his own, but chivalrously refrained from their presentment. His predicament occurred to her, however.
"And he could defeat you—"
"Never mind me."
"I can't stop minding; it's too late. I've minded so long—too long and too much. I've put you before Joe—before Milicent even. I've—"
"Don't say anything you'll be sorry for," he interposed, turning into a side street. "You're on your nerves—flat on your nerves."
She promptly proved his assertion by slipping without warning from his side. They had chanced abreast of a rambling little church tucked with its trees and shrubbery and greensward amidst buildings which dwarfed its tower to a pretty toy. Some droll giant might have plucked it out of Trollope and set it here to throw off its atmosphere like a fragrance from rectory to chantry. Its lich-gate held an image before which Mrs. Hilliard melted in a welter of devotion.
"Tommyrot," fumed her guide, nonplussed at this new vagary.
Ignored, Shelby braced himself patiently against a pillar in the dusky recess while the penitent knelt and pattered in deeps of contrition which the ministrations of her low-church rector in New Babylon had never plumbed. But patience vanished at the sound of footsteps up the street.
"Quit it, that's a good girl," he begged, reconnoitring.