Part 7

“On condition”—Godfrey scarce blinked—“she never comes near me. She has solemnly promised, and she’ll probably leave me alone to get the money. If she doesn’t—in diplomacy—I’m lost.” He had been turning his eyes vaguely about, this way and that, to avoid meeting hers; but after another instant he gave up the effort and she had the miserable confession of his glance. “I’ve been living in hell.”

“My brother, my brother!” she yearningly repeated.

“I’m not an idiot; yet for her I’ve behaved like one. Don’t ask me—you mustn’t know. It was all done in a day, and since then fancy my condition; fancy my work in such a torment; fancy my coming through at all.”

“Thank God you passed!” she cried. “You were wonderful!”

“I’d have shot myself if I hadn’t been. I had an awful day yesterday with the governor; it was late at night before it was over. I leave England next week. He brought me down here for it to look well—so that the children shan’t know.”

“He’s wonderful too!” Adela murmured.

“Wonderful too!” Godfrey echoed.

“Did she tell him?” the girl went on.

“She came straight to Seymour Street from here. She saw him alone first; then he called me in. That luxury lasted about an hour.”

“Poor, poor father!” Adela moaned at this; on which her brother remained silent. Then after he had alluded to it as the scene he had lived in terror of all through his cramming, and she had sighed forth again her pity and admiration for such a mixture of anxieties and such a triumph of talent, she pursued: “Have you told him?”

“Told him what?”

“What you said you would—what I did.”

Godfrey turned away as if at present he had very little interest in that inferior tribulation. “I was angry with you, but I cooled off. I held my tongue.”

She clasped her hands. “You thought of mamma!”

“Oh don’t speak of mamma!” he cried as in rueful tenderness.

It was indeed not a happy moment, and she murmured: “No; if you had thought of her—!”

This made Godfrey face her again with a small flare in his eyes. “Oh then it didn’t prevent. I thought that woman really good. I believed in her.”

“Is she very bad?”

“I shall never mention her to you again,” he returned with dignity.

“You may believe I won’t speak of her! So father doesn’t know?” the girl added.

“Doesn’t know what?”

“That I said what I did to Mrs. Churchley.”

He had a momentary pause. “I don’t think so, but you must find out for yourself.”

“I shall find out,” said Adela. “But what had Mrs. Churchley to do with it?”

“With my misery? I told her. I had to tell some one.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He appeared—though but after an instant—to know exactly why. “Oh you take things so beastly hard—you make such rows.” Adela covered her face with her hands and he went on: “What I wanted was comfort—not to be lashed up. I thought I should go mad. I wanted Mrs. Churchley to break it to father, to intercede for me and help him to meet it. She was awfully kind to me, she listened and she understood; she could fancy how it had happened. Without her I shouldn’t have pulled through. She liked me, you know,” he further explained, and as if it were quite worth mentioning—all the more that it was pleasant to him. “She said she’d do what she could for me. She was full of sympathy and resource. I really leaned on her. But when you cut in of course it spoiled everything. That’s why I was so furious with you. She couldn’t do anything then.”

Adela dropped her hands, staring; she felt she had walked in darkness. “So that he had to meet it alone?”