“Put me up a change of things,” said he, in French. “I start for England in an hour.”
“It is very well,” Pierre responded; and departed to do it. Lady Isabel waited till the man was gone, and then spoke, a faint flush of emotion in her cheeks.
“You do not mean what you say? You will not leave me yet?”
“I cannot do otherwise,” he answered. “There’s a mountain of business to be attended to, now that I am come into power.”
“Moss & Grab say they will act for you. Had there been a necessity for your going, they would not have offered that.”
“Ay, they do say so—with a nice eye to the feathering of their pockets! Besides, I should not choose for the old man’s funeral to take place without me.”
“Then I must accompany you,” she urged.
“I wish you would not talk nonsense, Isabel. Are you in a state to travel night and day? Neither would home be agreeable to you yet awhile.”
She felt the force of the objections. Resuming after a moment’s pause—“Were you to go to England, you might not be back in time.”
“In time for what?”