Deleah shyly, but quite honestly, said that she did not mind in the least. "He is going to tell me that, after all, he has decided to buy Bernard off," she told herself, but was not allowed to maintain that illusion long.
"I have a word or two I wished to say to you about my young brother,
Reginald," he said, plunging into his subject.
He sat, his face a little averted from her, looking down at the papers on his desk, and spoke in a tone as cold and non-committal as if he read what he had to say to her, written there.
Deleah receiving his communication in uncomfortable silence, he went on: "For several reasons—some of them business ones—it has been arranged for my brother to leave Brockenham for a year. To travel!"
Pausing there, she still finding nothing to say, he added, looking closer at the paper on the desk, "He will not go."
"I am sorry," Deleah shyly said.
"He won't go, because of you." Then he turned his face to her, and Deleah saw that his face expressed cold disapproval. "I am quite sure you do not wish to stand in Reginald's light, Miss Day?"
"Oh no."
"I was sure of it. And therefore I was encouraged to send for you. It will be better that we talk matters over a little. You have influence over Reggie?"
"I think not." Once or twice she had tried to impose her own ideas of what was right and fitting upon the young man, and had failed. Why should she pretend to any influence?