When the answer came, Bonnybell knew that neither to-day nor to-morrow would find her sur la pavé, as she herself would have worded it.
“You shall have a chance now; it will lie with yourself to profit by it.”
There was both dignity and kindness of a severe sort in voice and mien; and to the reprieved criminal the relief was so immense that she fell incontinently on the floor at her benefactress’s feet. Mrs. Tancred left her there, and hurried out of the room, in evident distaste for the prostration.
No sooner was she gone, than Miss Ransome picked herself up.
“That was another mistake,” she said. “Will there be no end to them? Oh, how did I live through it? Oh, what a near squeak! Oh for a cigarette!”
CHAPTER XII
“Well, what have you to say for your protégée now?”
“Who is my protégée? Have I got one?”
There was weariness in the voice that answered; but neither that quality nor the patience that accompanied and emphasized it had any influence in persuading the putter of the question to desist or delay the communication which it prefaced.
Edward had come home dispirited and out of tune. It had been a bad day on the Stock Exchange, even the gilt-edged securities tumbling down; a rumour of the suicide of a member had been confirmed, and the sense of how little he himself risked, in comparison with the life-and-death struggle going on around him, which to many minds would have been a source of consolation, deepened Mr. Tancred’s gloom. He would have been glad to have been told something pleasant, however trivial, on his return.