"I am glad that you understand me," he murmured. "It makes things easier for me. I don't suppose that you have the faintest idea how shy and sensitive I really am."
Miss Hartley, without even troubling to look at him, said that she was quite sure she had not.
"Nobody has," said Robert, shaking his head, "but I am going to make a fight against it. I am going to begin now. In the first place I want you not to think too hardly of my father. He has been a very good father to me. We have never had a really nasty word in our lives."
"I hope you never will have," said Joan, with some significance.
"I hope not," said Robert; "but in any case I want to tell you—"
Miss Hartley snatched away the hand he had taken, and with a hasty glance at the door retreated a pace or two from him.
"What is the matter?" he inquired, in a low voice.
Miss Hartley's eyes sparkled.
"My eldest daughter has just come in," she said, demurely. "I think you had better go."