"I could get a locum," he said slowly, "and take her to a Hydropathic Establishment for a fortnight."
"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Miss Desmond to herself. Aloud she said: "That would be delightful, later. But just now--well, of course it's for you to decide,--but it seems to me that it would be better for you two to be apart for a while. If you're here alone together--well, the very sight of you will remind each other--That's not grammar, as you say, but--"
He had not said anything. He was thinking, fingering the brass bosses on the corners of the divine Augustine, and tracing the pattern on the stamped pigskin.
"Of course if you care to risk it," she went on still with that fine air of detachment,--"but I have seen breaches that nothing could heal arise in just that way."
Two people sitting down together and thinking over everything they had against each other."
"But I've nothing against Lizzie."
"I daresay not," Miss Desmond lost patience at last, "but she has against you, or will have if you let her stay here brooding over it. However if you like to risk it--I'm sorry I spoke." She got up and moved to the door.
"No, no," he said hastily, "do not be sorry you spoke. You have given me food for reflection. I will think it all over quietly and--and--" he did not like to talk about prayers to Miss Desmond somehow, "and--calmly and if I see that you are right--I am sure you mean most kindly by me."
"Indeed I do," she said heartily, and gave him her hand in the manly way he hated. He took it, held it limply an instant, and repeated: "Most kindly."
He thought it over for so long that the aunt almost lost hope.
"I have to hold my tongue with both hands to keep it quiet. And if I say another word I shall spoil the song," she told Betty. "I've done my absolute best. If that doesn't fetch him, nothing will!"
It had "fetched him." At the end of two interminable days he sent to ask Miss Desmond to speak to him in the study. She went.
"I have been thinking carefully," he said, "most carefully. And I feel that you are right. Perhaps I owe her some amends. Do you know of any quiet country place?"
Miss Desmond thought Betty had perhaps for the moment had almost enough of quiet country places.