"Shall I take her a message?" I suggested, trying not to seem too eager. "I'm sure she'd like to get it."
Aline smiled indulgently. "Poor boy, doesn't he want me to say 'yes?' It's too late this evening, I'm afraid; but call on her and Barrie early to-morrow morning, and ask if she'd care to drop in on the poor invalid, on her way to rehearsal. I'd better see Mrs. Bal alone. She may want to say things she wouldn't wish Barrie to hear--don't you think so, Mr. Somerled? And, by the way, now your little ward is--more or less--safe in other hands, have you settled your future plans?"
"I expect to have something mapped out to-morrow," Somerled answered.
"You'll go on with your trip--your rest cure--I suppose, as you meant to when we--that is, before you were saddled with all this responsibility?"
"I've been looking forward to Edinburgh, from the first," said he, evasively.
Aline saw that she would get no more satisfaction, and ceased to risk irritating him; but after her guests had bidden her good-night, she kept me for a talk.
Of course she made me describe the scene between Barrie and her mother, but she was more interested to know how Somerled had looked, what he had said and done, than in my opinion of Mrs. Bal.
"What do _you_ think he means to do?" she appealed to me, desperately. "Do you think he's so infatuated with Barrie that he'll offer to take the girl off her mother's hands and marry her?"
"I've been studying Somerled for both our sakes," I said. "What I think is, he's been telling himself the girl is too young and all that, and ought to have a chance to meet a lot of other men. Yet he's seen how she unconsciously attracts every male creature who comes along, and that it's a danger for her if----"
"_Unconsciously_ attracts! But I forgot, you're infatuated too. And she _doesn't_ attract everybody. George Vanneck hardly considers her pretty. He can't bear this rising generation of long-legged young colts, he says; and he calls her hair carrots."
"We'll cross George off the list. It's long enough without him, and increasing with leaps and bounds. There'll probably be more names on it by to-morrow night" (evidently I have a prophetic soul). "But to go back to Somerled. Of course he foresaw something of what happened to-day: but Barrie's face when Mrs. Bal suggested being a sister to her was enough to turn a man of marble into a man of fire; and I don't think Somerled's resolutions up to that point were as hard even as sandstone. He must see now, as I do, that there'll be no place for the poor child with her mother, whether Mrs. Bal marries a millionaire or goes gayly on with her career as an actress. What is to become of a girl like Barrie, left to her own devices, with every man--well, let's say every _second_ man--who passes, stopping to flirt if not to propose? My fear is that Somerled's resolutions are turning round the other way, and that he's contemplating himself as permanent guardian--if Barrie'll take him."