"Oh, don't let us go!" she urged; but her
tone was neither pathetic nor despairing; though free from the faintest
accent of affection, it was, nevertheless, the tone of a woman who has
not always been denied.
"I am afraid we must go," he said firmly, but not unkindly. "You see, it
is in our honor--as I happen to know; for Venables gave me a hint when I
met him in the town the other day. He will take you in himself."
"And what is he like?"
"Fond of his dinner; he won't worry you," said Steel, reassuringly. "Nor
need you really bother your head about all that any more. Nobody has
recognized you yet; nobody is in the least likely to do so down here.
Don't you see how delightfully provincial they are? There's a local
lawyer, a pillar of all the virtues, who has misappropriated his own
daughter-in-law's marriage portion and fled the country with the
principal boy in their last pantomime; there are a lot of smart young
fellows who are making a sporting thousand every other day out of iron
warrants; the district's looking up after thirty years' bad times; and
this is the sort of thing it's talking about. These are its heroes and
its villains.
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