“No.” He did not know her, but he was beginning to understand the flush on the cheeks of the old lady and the light in her kind old eyes.
“That’s a pity, as Shan’t herself would say; but now to business. I want you to do something for me. I knew your grandfather; if that is not reason enough you must do it for me because I am old—and a woman, and because I want you to do it.”
“I will do anything you ask me to do—because you are you.”
Mrs. Sloane smiled: she was beginning to envy Diana.
“Some one I am very fond of is going to Scotland to-night—she is unhappy and she is anxious. I cannot bear to think of her to-morrow morning.”
“I guess—” he began.
Mrs. Sloane laid a restraining hand on his arm.
“—struggling for a breakfast-basket—there’s no time at which you so much want a man, don’t you agree?—even if you have a maid?”
Miles was ready to agree to anything.
“I have two conditions to make—one is that you do not see her, or speak to her to-night, and the other is that you leave her to-morrow morning, when you have seen her into the train which will take her to her destination—you agree?”