He was silent and very thoughtful for a moment. “I wonder that Una needed to be told that she had in me a friend,” he said slowly.
“I wonder to whom she would have gone on her own impulse?”
“To Count Samoval,” Miss Armytage informed him.
“Samoval!” he rapped the name out sharply. He was clearly angry. “That man! I can’t understand why O’Moy should suffer him about the house so much.”
“Terence, like everybody else, will suffer anything that Una wishes.”
“Then Terence is more of a fool than I ever suspected.”
There was a brief pause. “If you were to fail Una in this,” said Miss Armytage presently, “I mean that unless you yourself give her the assurance that you are ready to do what you can for Dick, should the occasion arise, I am afraid that in her present foolish mood she may still avail herself of Count Samoval. That would be to give Samoval a hold upon her; and I tremble to think what the consequences might be. That man is a snake—a horror.”
The frankness with which she spoke was to Tremayne full evidence of her anxiety. He was prompt to allay it.
“She shall have that assurance this very evening,” he promised.
“I at least have not pledged my word to anything or to any one. Even so,” he added slowly, “the chances of my services being ever required grow more slender every day. Una may be full of premonitions about Dick. But between premonition and event there is something of a gap.”