“I know it, I feel it, and I am deeply grateful, Helen; but it can’t be done. I can’t separate myself from my children.”
“You manage to exist without your boys for nine months of the year; and I would never wish to separate you. She could come home for Christmas and a couple of months in summer, and you yourself are in town half-a-dozen times in the course of the year. You could always stay at my house.”
“Yes, yes; it’s all true; but I don’t like it, Helen, and—”
“And you think only of yourself. It never occurs to you that I have not a soul belonging to me in that big, lonely house, and that it might be a comfort to me to have a bright young girl—”
Mr Bertrand stopped short in the middle of the lawn and stared into his companion’s face. There was an unusual flush on her cheeks, and her eyes glistened with tears.
“Oh, my dear Helen,” he cried. “I am a selfish wretch! I never thought of that. Of course, if you put it in that light, I can say no more. My dear old friend—I accept your offer with thanks! You have done so much for me, that I can refuse you nothing. It will be a lifelong advantage to the child, and I know you will make her happy.”
“I will, indeed; and you may trust me, Austin, to consider more than mere happiness. I will do my best to make her such a woman as her dear mother was before her.”
“I know you will. Thank you, Helen. And which—which—?”
“Nay, I am not going to tell you that.” Miss Carr had brushed the tears from her eyes, and with them all signs of her unusual emotion. She was herself again—sharp, decisive, matter-of-fact. “I must have my choice, of course; but I will take a week to make up my mind. And she must be left entirely in my hands for the time being, remember! I shall look after her clothes, education, pleasuring, as if she were my own child. There must be no interference.”
“Obstinate woman! Who would dare to enter the lists against you?” cried Mr Bertrand between a laugh and a sigh. “Heigho! Which of my little lasses am I going to lose? Whichever it is, I shall feel she is the last I could spare, and shall bear you a grudge for your choice. Can’t you give me a hint?”