"But, darling, your work here ...?"
"Anybody can do that!" Mrs. O'Rane interrupted unguardedly. "That's not the point, though, and you know it isn't. I say you oughtn't to go. It's like setting a race-horse to pull a removal van."
In the pause that followed, I wondered what opportunities for propaganda Lady Dainton had enjoyed since our meeting the week before.
"I've promised to resign the moment I've paid back the money I owe," said O'Rane with emphatic reasonableness.
"The money was given you as a present."
"But I can't take presents of that kind so long as I'm fit to work. Darling Sonia, you don't imagine I want to go away from you for three months, do you? If you can come down without leaving your work here undone——"
"Oh, I should be in the way!" she interrupted with another toss of her head. "You've got your Hilda."
She looked round the room, pointedly inviting us to follow the direction of her eyes and nodding at the tidy arrangement of books, the filing-cabinet, the half-hidden safe and neat library card-catalogue. I could see O'Rane blushing, as I myself began to blush, that such a scene should be enacted before comparative strangers.
"You mustn't say things like that," he remonstrated gently; then, with the lightness of affected inspiration, "We'll put it to Mr. Stornaway, as you suggest! I'm committed, sir, as I think in honour and certainly by an understanding with the Headmaster, to go back to Melton on Thursday. You've met Miss Merryon; I'm taking her with me to act as a sort of secretary. She'll have rooms in the town and will lend me the use of her eyes in the evenings;—I was frightfully handicapped last term and had to take advantage of the boys' good-nature. I know it's an unusual arrangement, but the circumstances are unusual. I got Dr. Burgess's approval——"