"Well? What does he say?"
"O-oh, he wants me to go out to Rochehaut and look after his old hotel."
"Then he's all right? He isn't ill or anything? Denis won't have to be anxious any more?"
"He's in hospital, but it's nothing much." Lettice read out what Gardiner said about his hand, and the description of her duties as well. But she did not read those sentences of barefaced impudence which transformed an apparently decorous business communication into a proposal of marriage. Dorothea drew a long breath.
"And you'll do it, Lettice? You'll go? Oh! may I come too? I won't be intense, truly I won't, and perhaps I might even help you a little—I would love to do something for Mr. Gardiner, to try and make up for all the harm I've done him! You are going yourself, anyhow, aren't you?"
"Oh, I suppose so," said Lettice, with a long-suffering air.
This was in the month of April, 1914.