He followed her into her studio and closed the door.
“What is it?”
“I am going to leave Maxfield, father. I cannot stay here any longer, living on other people. I am going to accept an engagement at the vicarage as governess.”
“What!” exclaimed her father. “What freak is this, miss? I forbid you to do anything of the kind.”
“I am very sorry you don’t approve. I thought you would. It will enable me to support myself, and perhaps help to keep Jill. I shall get my board and lodging, and £30 a year, I am going on Monday. I wanted to tell you before any one else knew of it.”
“I repeat you must abandon the idea at once. It is most derogatory in one of our family. In addition to which, I particularly desire to have you here during Mr Ratman’s visit.”
“It is chiefly on that account I have decided to go. It is not right, father, indeed it is not, to go on as we are.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him, and looked into his eyes.
It was an ordeal on which Captain Edward Oliphant had not calculated. The sight of her there, the touch of her hands, the clear flash of her eyes, recalled to him all sorts of unpleasant memories. They reminded him of a day long ago, when the girl’s mother had stood thus and pleaded with him for the sake of their children to be pure and honest and self-respecting. It reminded him of his own miserable schemings and follies, and how he had rejected that dear appeal, and ever since slipped and slipped out of reach of any love but the love of himself. It reminded him of the day when he heard that the one prop of his manhood had gone from him; and of how, even then, his sorrow was tempered by the thought that he was a free man to follow his own paths without question or reproof. Now, suddenly, the same hands seemed for a moment to lie on his shoulders, the same eyes to look into his, the same voice to fall on his ear, and he staggered under the illusion.
For a moment at least hope was within his reach. But the sound of a man’s voice in the passage without recalled him, with a shiver, to himself.