"I may be prolix," she said quietly. "Forgive me if I am, but I want you to understand me. I am beginning to see that I have adopted a wrong position with regard to a certain matter which we have discussed at your rooms and at Argueil. I want to reopen the subject from an entirely different point of view."

"You mean," I said, "the subject of Isobel?"

"Of course! The first time I came to see you," Lady Delahaye said, looking up at me with penitence in her blue eyes, "I was horrid. I am very, very sorry. I did not know then who Isobel was, and I was angry with everyone--with poor Will, with the child herself, and with you. You must forgive me! I was very much upset."

"I will never think of it again," I promised her.

"Then, again, at Argueil," she continued, "I adopted a wrong tone altogether. Yours was the more natural, the more human point of view.

There are certain very grave reasons why the child would be very much better out of the world. A life of seclusion would, I believe, in the end, when she is able to understand, be the happiest for her. And yet--she ought to have her chance!"

"I am glad that you admit that," I murmured.

"Now I am going to ask you something," she went on. "You will not be angry with me, I am sure. Do you think that a girl of Isobel's age and appearance is in her proper place in bachelor quarters, living with three young men?"

"I do not," I admitted. "I look upon it as a most regrettable necessity.

Still, you must not make it sound worse than it is. We have a housekeeper who is the very essence of respectability, and Isobel is under her care."

"I want to make it no longer a necessity," Lady Delahaye said, smiling.

"I want to relieve you and your conscience at the same time of a very awkward incubus. Listen! This is what I propose. Let Isobel come to me for a year! I shall treat her as my own daughter. She will have plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt. There are the theatres, and no end of scratch entertainments where one can take a girl of her age who is too young for society. She will mix with young people of her own age, she will have every advantage which, to speak frankly, must be denied to her in her present position. At the end of that year I shall tell her her history.

It is a sad and a miserable one. You may as well know that now. She can then take her choice of the convent, or any other mode of life which between us we can make possible for her. And I am very much inclined to believe, Arnold, that she will choose the convent."

"Is there any real reason, Lady Delahaye?" I asked, "why you should not tell me now what you propose to tell Isobel in a year's time? There have been so many mysterious circ.u.mstances in connection with this affair that it is hard to come to any decision when one is ignorant of so much."

"There are reasons--grave reasons--why I can tell you nothing," she answered. "Indeed, I would like to, Arnold," she continued earnestly, "but my position is a very difficult one. I think that you might trust me a little."

"I am sure that you wish to do what is best," I said, a little awkwardly, "but you must see that my position also is a little difficult. I, too, am under a promise!"

Her eyes flashed indignantly.

"To the man who killed my husband! The man whom you are shielding!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I think that you might at least have the grace to leave him out of the conversation."

"I have never introduced him," I answered. "I do not wish to do so. As to shielding him, I have not the slightest idea as to his whereabouts.

Be reasonable, Lady Delahaye. I----"

"Reasonable," she interrupted. "That is what I want you to be! Ask yourself a plain question. Which is the more fitting place for her--my house, or your chambers?"

She pointed to Isobel, who was leaning back in her chair laughing heartily into the face of a young man who was bending over her. By chance she looked just then older even than her years, and Arthur's glum figure, too, in the background was suggestive.

"Your house, without a doubt," I answered gravely, "if it is the house of a friend."

Her satin slipper beat the ground impatiently. She looked at me with a frown upon her face.

"Do you believe, then," she asked, "that I am her enemy? Does my offer sound like it?"

"Indeed, no," I answered, rising. "I am going to give Isobel herself a chance of accepting or declining it."

I crossed the room. Isobel, seeing me come, rose at once.

"Is it time for us to go?" she asked.

"Not quite!" I answered. "Go and talk to Lady Delahaye for a few minutes. She has something to say to you."

Isobel made a little grimace, so slight that only I could notice it, and took my place upon the sofa. I talked for a few minutes with some of the men whom I knew, and then Arthur touched me on the arm.

"Can't we go, Arnold?" he exclaimed, a little peevishly. "I've never been so bored in all my life."

"We must wait for a few minutes," I answered. "Isobel is talking to Lady Delahaye."

"I don't know a soul here, and I'm dying for a cigarette."

I pointed through the curtain to the anteroom adjoining.

"You can smoke in there," I remarked. "I'll introduce you to Miss Ernston if you like, the girl who drives the big Panhard in the park. I heard her say that she was going in there to get one of Lady Delahaye's Russian cigarettes!"

Arthur shook his head. He was covertly watching Isobel, sitting on the sofa.

"I'll go in and have the cigarette," he said, "but, Arnold, there's no fresh move on, is there? You're looking pretty glum!"

I shook my head.

"No, there is nothing exactly fresh," I answered. "Come along and smoke, will you! I want Lady Delahaye and Isobel to have their talk out."

He followed me reluctantly into the smaller of Lady Delahaye's reception-rooms, where we smoked for a few minutes in silence. Then Mabel Ernston stopped to speak to me for a moment, and I introduced Arthur. I left them talking motors, and stepped back into the other room. Isobel had already risen to her feet, and Lady Delahaye was looking at her curiously as though uncertain how far she had been successful. She saw me enter, and beckoned me to approach.

"I think that Isobel is tired," she said, in a tone which was meant to be kind. "She has promised to come and see me again."

Isobel looked at me. Her mouth, which a few minutes before had been curved with smiles, was straight now, and resolutely set. She was distinctly paler, and her manner seemed to have acquired a new gravity.

I must confess that my first impulse was one of relief. Isobel had not found Lady Delahaye's offer, then, so wonderfully attractive.

"Do you mind coming home now, Arnold?" she asked. "I did not know that it was so late."

I saw Lady Delahaye's face darken at her simple use of my Christian name, and the touch of her fingers upon my arm. Arthur heard our voices, and came to us at once. So we took leave of our hostess, and turned homewards.

For a long time we walked almost in silence. Then Isobel turned towards me with a new gravity in her face, and an unusual hesitation in her tone.

"Arnold," she said, "Lady Delahaye has been pointing out to me one or two things which I had not thought of before. I suppose she meant to be kind. I suppose it is right that I should know. But----" her voice trembled--"I wish she had not told me."

"Lady Delahaye is an interfering old cat!" Arthur exclaimed viciously.

"Don't take any notice of her, Isobel."

"But I must know," she answered, "whether the things which she said were true."

"They were probably exaggerations," I said cheerfully; "but let us hear them, at any rate."

"She said," Isobel continued, looking steadily in front of her, "that you were all three very poor indeed, and that I had no right to come and live with you, and make you poorer still, when I had a home offered me elsewhere. She said that I should disturb your whole life, that you would have to give up many things which were a pleasure to you, and you would not be able to succeed so well with your work, as you would have to write altogether for money. And she said that I should be grown up soon, and ought to live where there are women; and when I told her about Mrs. Burdett she laughed unpleasantly, and said that she did not count at all. And that is why--she wants me--to go there!"

Again the shadow of tragedy gleamed in the child's white face. Her face was strained, her eyes had lost the deep softness of their colouring, and there lurked once more in their depths the terror of nameless things. To me the sight of her like this was so piteous that I wasted not a moment in endeavouring to rea.s.sure her.