“Oh, she was delighted... Eric, you have got the loveliest rooms. We shall live here, of course; I couldn’t bear to go anywhere else.”
“If,” he warned her.
“When,” she amended. “Eric, why d’you insist on waiting a month? D’you want to see if you’ll get tired of me?”
“No, I just want to be sure that you know your own mind. Sudden conversions are always dangerous. And you’re too precious to me to be married on a snap division. So for a month we won’t say or do anything that ties your hands in any way. I’m not giving a hint to any one, even my own people; I’m not proposing to make any allusion to you.”
Before three days had passed Eric found that it was easier to take this resolution than to live up to it. Amy Loring stopped him in the street to say:
“I hear the little Maitland girl is working for you now. I’m so glad.”
“My secretary’s gone for a holiday,” he answered, unconsciously putting himself on his guard. “Ivy kindly consented to come in her place for a few weeks.”
“I was told you’d taken her on permanently.”
“Oh, no! Who did you hear that from?”
“Johnnie Gaymer. He seems to have transferred his affections to another quarter. I won’t mention names, but a woman—she’s rather a friend of mine; at least, her husband is; and, while he’s away, she’s been getting much too intimate with Johnnie—I talked to her... And then I talked to him. Whether it ever does any good I don’t know, but I did tell him very frankly to keep his hands off other people’s property. And, while I was on the subject, I told him to leave this Maitland child alone. It was then that he told me she’d gone to you.”