"Oh yes, you can--and you will. I'll look in for it to-morrow morning--by that time you'll have thought it over. You're not so crusty as you make yourself out to be. That'll be four-and-twenty hours clean thrown away; and when you're spoiling for a burst like I am, that's a deuce of time. But I shall have every confidence in your kind offices when you've had a chance to see just what I'm driving at."
When Mr. Lamb had retired Mr. Talfourd seemed unhappy.
"Every time that man talks to me I want to kick him. I wonder if he affects other people in the same way--the unmentionable animal! If, as the husband of his wife, he thinks himself entitled to talk to me like that, it's time for me to think things over. I must know where I am moving. Three hundred pounds are three hundred pounds--I know that as well as any one--but they may be earned too dearly. It is one thing to be Mrs. Lamb's secretary, quite another to be----" He did not finish the sentence even mentally. Sitting down to the table he drew towards him the little heap of correspondence which was supposed to justify his secretarial existence. There were about a dozen envelopes, mostly containing circulars of different kinds. "I believe that the letters are examined, and any of the slightest importance retained, before they are sent to me. The idea of my receiving three hundred pounds a year for opening circulars is too thin."
While he sat with both elbows on the table, staring ruefully in front of him, the door opened again, and Mrs. Lamb came in.
"At work? I hope I'm not disturbing you."
She had changed more than her husband, whether for the better or for the worse was not easy to determine. So far as appearance went she had become a much better imitation of a lady. Society, or what with her passed as society, had smoothed away some of the angles. She had the air of a woman who had to do with many persons of different sorts, and had learned to adapt herself to them all. One felt that she was probably a popular character on the stage on which she had chosen to perform--successful, at least within certain limits. One did not wonder that it was so, if only because, in her own way, she was good to look at.
That way, however, did not happen to be Mr. Talfourd's--which was unfortunate. Indeed, she inspired him with a curious feeling. He was afraid of her. It seemed absurd, but he was. For one thing, he realised that she was not only a clever, an unusually clever woman, but that her cleverness lay in a direction in which he was incompetent, and would perhaps prefer to be. Again, he felt that she read him like an open book, knew him to his finger-tips, while she was beyond his comprehension--where, again, he would possibly prefer her to remain. He had an uncomfortable suspicion that she saw in him something which was not savoury; that her keenest glances were continually directed on his weakest points; that it would please her to find him an undesirable creature. He had no overt cause to suppose this was so. So far she had been to him nothing but a friend--a friend in need. But on such a point even the vaguest shadow of a doubt was disquieting.
He rose as she came in.
"It is not possible for you to disturb me--I wish it were."
"You wish it were? Why?"