“You must not go,” he cried.
“Must not? How dare you speak to me thus, Monsieur?” Then she tempered it. “There is a lady here whom I love, and who is ill. I must not be long from her bedside.”
“She is very ill?” said Nick, probably for want of something better.
“She is not really ill, Monsieur, but depressed—is not that the word? She is a very dear friend, and she has had trouble—so much, Monsieur,—and my mother brought her here. We love her as one of the family.”
This was certainly ingenuous, and it was plain that the girl gave us this story through a certain nervousness, for she twisted her sewing in her fingers as she spoke.
“Mademoiselle,” said Nick, “I would not keep you from such an errand of mercy.”
She gave him a grateful look, more dangerous than any which had gone before.
“And besides,” he went on, “we have come to stay awhile with you, Mr. Ritchie and myself.”
“You have come to stay awhile?” she said.
I thought it time that the farce were ended.