“You will really send the girls away?”
“The girls shall go, on the day when Lady Northlake invites them.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” said Mr. Mool.
He made the note; and they rose to say good-bye. Faithful Mr. Gallilee still thought of Carmina. “Do consider it again!” he said at parting. “Are you sure the law won’t help her?”
“I might look at her father’s Will,” Mr. Mool replied.
Mr. Gallilee saw the hopeful side of this suggestion, in the brightest colours. “Why didn’t you think of it before?” he asked.
Mr. Mool gently remonstrated. “Don’t forget how many things I have on my mind,” he said. “It only occurs to me now that the Will may give us a remedy—if there is any open opposition to the ward’s marriage engagement, on the guardian’s part.”
There he stopped; knowing Mrs. Gallilee’s methods of opposition too well to reckon hopefully on such a result as this. But he was a merciful man—and he kept his misgivings to himself.
On the way home, Mr. Gallilee encountered his wife’s maid. Marceline was dropping a letter into the pillar-post-box at the corner of the Square; she changed colour, on seeing her master. “Corresponding with her sweetheart,” Mr. Gallilee concluded.
Entering the house with an unfinished cigar in his mouth, he made straight for the smoking-room—and passed his youngest daughter, below him, waiting out of sight on the kitchen stairs.