“People are so foolish. They talk.”
“But you go to Dick Garstin!”
He had turned, and now made her walk back by his side along the river bank among the whirling leaves.
“People have begun to talk about us,” she said, almost desperately. “That women, Mrs. Birchington, who lives opposite to you—she’s a gossip.”
“And do you mind such people?” he asked, with an air of surprised contempt.
“A girl has to be careful what she does.”
As Miss Van Tuyn said this she marvelled at her own conventionality. That she should be driven to such banality, she who had defied the opinion of both Paris and London!
“Please come once more. I want you to help me.”
“I! How can I help you?”
“With Dick Garstin. I do not want to fight with that man. I am not what he thinks, but I do not wish to quarrel. You can help.”