“Is it a genuine concern? You won’t risk anything this time?”
She put the question for his sake—for theirs. She did not wish him to fail, to suffer again. She wanted to be rich—safe—for the rest of her life.
“As genuine as anything can be,” he returned evasively. “But don’t spoil yourself by being serious. The prettiest woman—and you are looking devilish pretty to-night, darling—can’t afford to be serious: it brings lines about the mouth.”
She returned his smile, but a moment after she sobered again.
“I’m obliged to be serious,” she told him deprecatingly. “What arrangement do you propose for to-night? If I go to Bloomsbury too late they will not be willing to take me in.”
“Bloomsbury!” He looked annoyed at being reminded of that page in his life. “You don’t want to go there.”
“They know me. I can think of no other place.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. She searched his flushed face anxiously through the uncertain light.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said at last. “There’s a very fair hotel a few doors down. Sutton shall send my traps there. I’ll engage a couple of rooms for myself and him, and you shall have this place. Will that do? You’ll be very comfortable. They give me service—the cooking’s fair. One of the chambermaids will unpack your things and help dress you.”
He spoke as if she had all her life been accustomed to such attendance. He was wonderfully plastic; it was one of his feminine attributes. In a few weeks he had assimilated the manner, cultivated the brain of a wealthy man who instinctively measures cost by a five-pound note: nothing smaller than a “fiver.”