‘I daresay Mr. Sorell didn’t speak of it to you, because—he hates it.’
‘I suppose it’s just a theatrical coup,’ said Nora, passionately, as they walked on—‘to impress the public.’
‘It isn’t!—it isn’t anything of the kind. And Otto had only to say No.’
‘It’s ridiculous!—preposterous! They’ll clash all day long.’
Connie replied with difficulty, as though she had so pondered and discussed this matter with herself that every opinion about it seemed equally reasonable.
‘I don’t think so. Otto wishes it.’
‘But why—but why?’ insisted Nora. ‘Oh, Connie!—as if Douglas Falloden could look after anybody but himself!’
Then she repented a little. Connie smiled, rather coldly.
‘He looked after his father,’ she said, quietly. ‘I told you all that in my letters. And you forget how it was—that he and Otto came across each other again.’
Nora warmly declared that she had not forgotten it, but that it did not seem to her to have anything to do with the extraordinary proposal that the man more responsible than anyone else for the maiming—possibly for the death—of Otto Radowitz, if all one heard about him were true, should be now installed as his companion and guardian during these critical months.