This time she let her eyes dwell on him a little longer, with a momentary smile, but more of wonder at his audacity than pleasure.
‘That was well meant,’ she said; ‘it was well meant. Susie, I think you can be spared to-day. You might go out with him, and show him something. It is natural that he should want to see something: and I shall have more time this evening to tell him what I have settled. I have heard of an engineer’s in which you can begin work. But you must take a holiday to-day. Susie will get her hat, and be ready at once. You will like that I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Susie withdrew quickly, her face brightening, and John stood, watching his mother, who let her eye wander over her figures, then recovered herself with a glance towards him, in which he could read impatience restrained, and a desire that he should be gone. It was this, perhaps, that inspired him with the question, which a moment before he had never dreamed of putting to her.
‘Will you tell me,’ he said, ‘whether there was ever a Mr. Montressor who was a friend of my father’s?’ He asked this without knowing why.
She started, and the pen fell out of her hand. If it were possible to change from her natural paleness, he would have said she grew more pale. Against the merciless shining of the great window he could see her tremble, or at least so he thought. She did not say anything for a moment, and when she spoke her voice was somehow different.
‘I did not,’ she said, ‘know all your father’s friends; but it is a long time since all ended in that way. What do you know of any such friends?’
‘It is an uncommon name,’ said John.
‘Yes, it is an uncommon name. It is the sort of name that actors assume, and people of that kind. Ah, here is Susie, ready. Take your brother wherever you think he will like best to go. Don’t hurry. I shall not be anxious, as long as you are here in time for tea.’ She had risen with a sort of uneasy smile, and went with them to the door, touching Susie’s dress with her hand, smoothing down the little jacket she wore. When Susie had preceded her brother out of the room, Mrs. Sandford transferred her touch, nervously, quickly, to John’s arm. ‘Such people are no friends for you,’ she said, hastily. ‘Avoid them wherever you meet them. Avoid them! they are not friends for you.’
She had made no acknowledgment, and yet she had made more than an acknowledgment. The self-betrayal was instantaneous, but it was complete. Then it was his father of whom Montressor would not speak. Poor May! What had happened that he should be called Poor May!