"He was too good to me," said Percival, and his heart was very full. Those bygone days with his father, which had drifted so far into the past, seemed suddenly brought near by Judith's words, and he felt the warmth of the old tenderness once more.
"So I was very glad to find you here," she said. "For Bertie's sake, not for yours. I am so grieved that you should have been so unfortunate!" She looked up at him with eyes which questioned and wondered and doubted all at once.
But a small girl, staring at the shop-windows, drove a perambulator straight at Percival's legs. With a laugh he stepped into the roadway to escape the peril, and came back: "Don't grieve about me, Miss Lisle. It couldn't be helped, and I have no right to complain." These were his spoken words: his unspoken thought was that it served him right for being such a fool as to trust her father. "It's worse for you, I think, and harder," he went on; "and if you are so brave—"
"It's for Bertie if I am," she said quickly: "it is very hard on him. We have spoilt him, I'm afraid, and now he will feel it so terribly. For people cannot be the same to us: how should they, Mr. Thorne? Some of our friends have been very good—no one could be kinder than Miss Crawford—but it is a dreadful change for Bertie. And I have been afraid of what he would do if he went where he had no companions. A sister is so helpless! So I was very thankful when your letter came. But I am sorry for you, Mr. Thorne. He told me just now—"
"But, as that can't be helped," said Percival, "be glad for my sake too. I have been very lonely."
She looked up at him and smiled. "He insisted on going to Bellevue street the first thing this morning," she said. "I[page 180] don't think any other lodgings would have suited him."
"But they are not good enough for you."
"Oh yes, they are, and near Standon Square, too: I shall only have seven or eight minutes' walk to my work. I should not have liked—Oh, here he is!—Bertie, this is cool of you, deserting me in this fashion!"
"Why, of course you were all right with Thorne, and he asked me to let him help me in any way he could. I like to take a man at his word."
"By all means take me at mine," said Percival.