“Blaise Olifant,” she repeated critically. She laughed. “He might have done worse.”
He turned over the pages. “There’s one thing here that my father was always drumming into me. Yes, here it is. It’s marked in blue pencil.”
“Then it must have been drummed into me, too,” said Olivia.
“ ‘On ne consulte que l’oreille, parce qu’on manque de cœur. La règle est l’honnêteté.´”
“Yes,” she said, with a sigh.
He replaced the book. They went in silence out to the landing. After a few seconds of embarrassment they turned and descended to the hall.
“I can more than understand, Miss Gale, why you feel you can’t let the house. But I’m sorry.”
She weakened, foreseeing the house empty and desolate, given over to dust and mice and ghosts.
“It was the idea of a pack of people, the British Family in all its self-centredness and selfishness, coming in here that I couldn’t stand,” she confessed.
“Then is there a chance for me?” he asked, his face brightening. “Look. I’m open to a bargain. The house is just what I want. I’m not a recluse. I’m quite human. I should like to have a place where I can put up a man or so for a week-end, and I’ve a married sister, none too happy, who now and then might like to find a refuge with me. There’s also a friend, rather a distinguished fellow, who wants to join me for a few months’ quiet and hard work. So, suppose I give you my promise to hold that room sacred, to keep it just as it is and allow no one to go into it except a servant to dust and so forth—what would you say? Not now. Think it over and write to me at your convenience.”