“Only for you, perhaps. I suppose the reason you are here is that she sent you away when danger threatened. You didn’t leave her, I am sure.”
“Not of my own free will, never! My mother sent for me; but not on account of any danger. She gave me up willingly enough when I was of no use to her, but now she thinks that I am old enough to be of assistance. Assistance to her!”
“I daresay it is better for you, after all, than your life with Princess Soudaroff,” said Caerleon, judicially. “We can’t always have what we like, you know, and it doesn’t look well for a girl to be unable to get on with her mother.”
“How dare you say that?” she cried, turning upon him again. “What do you know of my circumstances? Do you think I have not tried, longed, agonised to honour my father and mother? but I will not help them in their work. Don’t talk to me of the look of things until you know something about them. Oh, I beg——”
“Excuse me,” said Caerleon, quickly, “but if you have to apologise to me again, do you mind turning your head away, and doing it in a whisper? The effect on yourself would be the same, and it would spare my feelings.”
“You are a scoffer!” said Mdlle. O’Malachy, sharply.
“I hope not; but I am afraid that your apologies will get on my nerves.”
“Your nerves?” she looked him up and down, and then laughed. “You don’t suffer from nerves?”
“You don’t know how wearing it is to be always looking out for apologies—and getting them.”
“But why should it affect your nerves? You are English, you do not drink absinthe?” She was still looking him over in the light of a curious medical problem, and her tone was full of interest.