He was looking at her with a hint of humour in his red-brown eyes. They were shining too, shining with a hot intensity, as though the leaping flames of the fire were reflected there. But at her words, he let her go very abruptly and turned from her. He took up his pipe again, standing so that she saw only his broad back and gleaming hair, while she waited behind him in palpitating silence.
Some seconds passed before he spoke. And then: "All right, my girl," he said. "Have it your own way! I reckon he’s your brother more than mine, and I know you have his welfare at heart. If you think it to his interest to go and undo him--he ain’t uncomfortable, mind you! I saw to that--I shan’t interfere either way. Do whatever seems good to you!"
So he delivered himself, and having spoken sat squarely down and pulled out his match-box as though the matter were at an end.
"Well? Aren’t you going?" he said, after a moment.
And still she stood, feeling the strain to be past yet not daring to relax her guard.
Jake struck a match and held it to his pipe, looking at her whimsically between great puffs of smoke.
"There! Sit down!" he said, after a meanest. "Leave the child alone for a bit! I’ll go up to him myself before long."
Casual as was his voice, the force of his personality reached and dominated her. It was certainly not of her own volition that she obeyed.
She sat down again in the low chair before the hearth. "I know he will have a bad night," she said uneasily.
"It won’t be any the worse for this," said Jake, with confidence. "And, now, look here, my girl, I want to ask you something--just in a friendly way."
Maud’s hands clasped each other hard. There was no repose in her attitude. "What is it?" she asked, in that aloof voice of hers that emanated from intense shyness rather than pride.
Jake was smoking steadily. The heavy odour of his tobacco filled the room. "I don’t want to give any offence," he said. "But it seems to me that Lord Saltash is on a footing of intimacy with you and Bunny that rather points to your not knowing the sort of person he really is."
Maud’s eyes grew suddenly darker. She looked him full in the face. "I know him too well to discuss him with any--outsider," she said.