Bonnybell breathed again; and so—or she thought so—did Edward.
CHAPTER X
“Far from the sun and summer shade”—far, that is to say, from the distractions and liability to intrusion of the more public parts of the house, lay a gallery; and off that gallery lay a room which had witnessed the evolution of Camilla. It was to witness the evolution of Bonnybell.
“In my old schoolroom you will be quite safe from interruption,” Mrs. Tancred had said, when first breaking to her future pupil her intention of repairing the yawning gaps in that pupil’s education. It was on the Monday morning, and there had been very little “breaking” about the—to the ears that received it—horrible and staggering announcement.
“You are only seventeen, I believe?”
“Yes, only seventeen.” She would be eighteen in three days, but did not think it necessary to add this superfluous admission. And, as she reflected afterwards, it would not have saved her.
“So that, if taken in hand at once, you will be able in some degree to make up for the time you have so grievously lost.”
An indistinct assent. To what grisly project was this the preface?
Miss Ransome had been boredly speculating as to how she was to get through the day with Edward away in the City; and Toby so near and yet so far at the Dower House, but it seemed that the solving of the problem was to be done for her.
“I do not know whether you are aware of it, but your spelling is phonetic.”