“And what if she did?” asked Arnold, in his own straightforward way. “Do you think she would be angry with me for making myself useful to you?”
“Yes,” rejoined Anne, sharply, “if she was jealous of me.”
Arnold’s unlimited belief in Blanche expressed itself, without the slightest compromise, in two words:
“That’s impossible!”
Anxious as she was, miserable as she was, a faint smile flitted over Anne’s face.
“Sir Patrick would tell you, Mr. Brinkworth, that nothing is impossible where women are concerned.” She dropped her momentary lightness of tone, and went on as earnestly as ever. “You can’t put yourself in Blanche’s place—I can. Once more, I beg you to go. I don’t like your coming here, in this way! I don’t like it at all!”
She held out her hand to take leave. At the same moment there was a loud knock at the door of the room.
Anne sank into the chair at her side, and uttered a faint cry of alarm. Arnold, perfectly impenetrable to all sense of his position, asked what there was to frighten her—and answered the knock in the two customary words:
“Come in!”