“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs Shepton,” replied the girl, haughtily. “I would not have come to see you if I had thought any one else—”
“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Michael, recollecting himself, as he realised that he was the culprit.—“I will come back again, nurse,” he added to his old friend.
But now it was on him that the housekeeper’s detaining hand was laid.
“Stay a moment, Master Michael,” she began; and acting on a sudden impulse, she again appealed to Philippa. “Will you give me leave,” she said, “to consult Mr Michael about—about this difficulty, as we have reason to think that he knows so much already? May it not be better to tell him all?”
Philippa turned upon her with flaming cheeks, too angry now to care whether the young man saw her tear-stained face and swollen eyes or not.
“Mrs Shepton,” she said, indignantly, “you leave me no choice. What you have said now is equivalent to telling everything! Say what you like, I don’t care, but I cannot stay to hear it. And remember if—if Mr Gresham agrees to what I know you mean to ask him, he will do so for your sake, not for mine.—I make no appeal to you,” she ended, coldly, glancing at the young man, as she determinedly crossed the room and disappeared, closing the door behind her.
The two she had left looked at each other in consternation. Then Michael gave a short laugh.
“What a whirlwind of a girl!” he ejaculated. “What does it all mean, Mrs Shepton, ma’am? I suppose you must tell me now, and I suppose I’ve got to listen. But why is your young friend so furious with me—whatever have I done?” and in his tone, beneath its lightness, Mrs Shepton perceived a considerable spice of indignation.
The housekeeper, though sharing his indignation, looked ready to cry.
“What have you done, sir?” she repeated. “Nothing, of course nothing, except that you have been very kind and considerate about a self-willed, headstrong young lady—for a young lady she is, as you suspected from the first. And never in all my life have I heard of such a wild scheme as she has planned and carried out. If she had fallen into some hands, a nice scandal there would have been! But yet,” she went on, her voice softening, “I am so sorry for her too, for her motives were good and most unselfish. And when she goes home, she will have to face her parents’ great displeasure.”