“Yes,” he admitted, “we’re great friends.”
“Then you might naturally feel yourself justified in telling her that you don’t think I’m the right person for Effie.” He uttered a sound of protest, but she disregarded it. “I don’t say you’d like to do it. You wouldn’t: you’d hate it. And the natural alternative would be to try to persuade me that I’d be better off somewhere else than here. But supposing that failed, and you saw I was determined to stay? then you might think it your duty to tell Mrs. Leath.”
She laid the case before him with a cold lucidity. “I should, in your place, I believe,” she ended with a little laugh.
“I shouldn’t feel justified in telling her, behind your back, if I thought you unsuited for the place; but I should certainly feel justified,” he rejoined after a pause, “in telling you if I thought the place unsuited to you.”
“And that’s what you’re trying to tell me now?”
“Yes; but not for the reasons you imagine.”
“What, then, are your reasons, if you please?”
“I’ve already implied them in advising you not to give up all idea of the theatre. You’re too various, too gifted, too personal, to tie yourself down, at your age, to the dismal drudgery of teaching.”
“And is that what you’ve told Mrs. Leath?”
She rushed the question out at him as if she expected to trip him up over it. He was moved by the simplicity of the stratagem.
“I’ve told her exactly nothing,” he replied.
“And what–exactly–do you mean by ‘nothing’? You and she were talking about me when I came into her sitting-room yesterday.”
Darrow felt his blood rise at the thrust.
“I’ve told her, simply, that I’d seen you once or twice at Mrs. Murrett’s.”
“And not that you’ve ever seen me since?”
“And not that I’ve ever seen you since…”
“And she believes you–she completely believes you?”
He uttered a protesting exclamation, and his flush reflected itself in the girl’s cheek.
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to ask you that.” She halted, and again cast a rapid glance behind and ahead of her. Then she held out her hand. “Well, then, thank you– and let me relieve your fears. I sha’n’t be Effie’s governess much longer.”
At the announcement, Darrow tried to merge his look of relief into the expression of friendly interest with which he grasped her hand. “You really do agree with me, then? And you’ll give me a chance to talk things over with you?”
She shook her head with a faint smile. “I’m not thinking of the stage. I’ve had another offer: that’s all.”
The relief was hardly less great. After all, his personal responsibility ceased with her departure from Givre.
“You’ll tell me about that, then–won’t you?”
Her smile flickered up. “Oh, you’ll hear about it soon…I must catch Effie now and drag her back to the blackboard.”
She walked on for a few yards, and then paused again and confronted him. “I’ve been odious to you–and not quite honest,” she broke out suddenly.
“Not quite honest?” he repeated, caught in a fresh wave of wonder.
“I mean, in seeming not to trust you. It’s come over me again as we talked that, at heart, I’ve always known I could…”
Her colour rose in a bright wave, and her eyes clung to his for a swift instant of reminder and appeal. For the same space of time the past surged up in him confusedly; then a veil dropped between them.
“Here’s Effie now!” she exclaimed.
He turned and saw the little girl trotting back to them, her hand in Owen Leath’s. Even through the stir of his subsiding excitement Darrow was at once aware of the change effected by the young man’s approach. For a moment Sophy Viner’s cheeks burned redder; then they faded to the paleness of white petals. She lost, however, nothing of the bright bravery which it was her way to turn on the unexpected. Perhaps no one less familiar with her face than Darrow would have discerned the tension of the smile she transferred from himself to Owen Leath, or have remarked that her eyes had hardened from misty grey to a shining darkness. But her observer was less struck by this than by the corresponding change in Owen Leath. The latter, when he came in sight, had been laughing and talking unconcernedly with Effie; but as his eye fell on Miss Viner his expression altered as suddenly as hers.