Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/305

 spinster who wanted to be read to in Italian, and the third was from a retired army officer with an invalid wife who required a woman who was young and pretty and who had been trained as a nurse.

"And I," said Miss Fosdick, "can do none of these things. So I came back. . . . I came back to Aunt Henrietta and now she has gone. I don't know what I'm to do. I haven't any more money and I don't know how to do anything but be a companion to Aunt Henrietta. I ought to die."

Mr. Winnery, feeling very masculine and mediæval, told her that they must first of all be practical. She must go back to Brinoë in the fiacre with him. He would lend her money until they worked out her problem. He told her about Aunt Bessie's death and how he was now a rich man. He had a feeling for her, he said, from the very beginning. He had known all along that she was unhappy with the seeress.

But Miss Fosdick suddenly grew respectable and unfeminine. "No," she said, "I couldn't do that. I couldn't accept any money from a gentleman I barely know. A lady can't do such things."

For a moment Mr. Winnery was irritated, and then he remembered that of course she was in trouble and he must be gentle with her. He tried to make her understand that it was purely a business matter and that she could pay him back. But beneath his arguments Miss Fosdick only grew more and more respectable. He might have been a lecherous old man planning the ruin of a young virgin. He wanted to say, "Well, if you don't borrow money from me what on earth are you going to do?" He would have