“How can you talk of giving us trouble?” said Arthur; “it is you who are giving yourself a great deal for us;” and he glanced at Lettice as if to hint to her that she should endorse his speech. But she said nothing; only later in the evening, when their visitor was just about leaving, she said to him in a quiet but somewhat studied voice—
“I hope you will be able to see something of the neighbourhood while you are here. There are so many pretty excursions, and in a week one can do a good deal. Arthur himself has not seen much; he has only been three weeks with us all the months we have been here. And he would enjoy going about with you.”
Godfrey Auriol was not deficient in perception, still less in quick resolution when he saw occasion for it. He hesitated, but for half a second only, before he replied.
“Yes,” he said calmly, “it would be very pleasant were it feasible. But you know, Miss Morison, it is not for pleasure I have come all this way. There is a great deal of business to be seen to, and for some of it I must have your attention, though I would gladly spare you all trouble if I could. At what hour to-morrow may I come? It is no use putting off what has to be done, however painful.”
Lettice’s colour rose high—all over her face; she felt the mortification doubly, since it was in the presence of her younger sister and brother. But she did her best not to show what she felt, and to any one not knowing her well, her emotion might have passed for what was only natural and almost seemly under the circumstances. And even in the tone of her voice as she answered, it required a nice and skilled observer to detect the latent armour of resistance in which she was determined to clothe herself. Unfortunately for her, her three companions, the two younger ones thanks to their intimate knowledge of her peculiarities, the third by dint of unusual and cultivated power of discrimination, which she herself had raised to suspicion, were not deceived by her words, in themselves perfectly unexceptionable.
“At any hour you like,” she said. “Of course it is best that we should know all about our money, though I really do know already all that is practically necessary. But these kind of formalities must be gone through, I suppose. So I can be ready at any hour you like. Will ten o’clock do?”
“Perfectly, if it will suit you all?” said Mr Auriol, glancing inquiringly at Nina and Arthur. “I shall want you all three. The two little ones, of course, it would be absurd to talk to on such matters; but you three are much in the same position. You are all minors. Besides, it is not only about money matters I want to speak to you.”
These last two or three sentences were bitter pills for Lettice to swallow. Arthur and Nina had the consideration not to look at her. Once she opened her lips as if about to speak, but thought better of it and said nothing.
“I can put all that right at the proper time,” she reflected. “No use beginning about it now. But it is really too absurd, Nina and Arthur counted on a par with me!”
And it did seem so very absurd that she felt she could afford to smile at it, and with this consideration her calm returned. So that her brother and sister, and even Mr Auriol himself, were surprised, and somewhat impressed, by the perfectly unruffled tone in which she said pleasantly—