“Do what?”
“This. Impositions. For my boys.”
She raised her eyebrows, then knitted them momentarily, and looked at him. “Are you Mr. Lewisham?” she asked with an affectation of entire ignorance and discovery.
She knew him perfectly well, which was one reason why she was writing the imposition, but pretending not to know gave her something to say.
Mr. Lewisham nodded.
“Of all people! Then”—frankly—“you have just found me out.”
“I am afraid I have,” said Lewisham. “I am afraid I have found you out.”
They looked at one another for the next move. She decided to plead in extenuation.
“Teddy Frobisher is my cousin. I know it’s very wrong, but he seemed to have such a lot to do and to be in such trouble. And I had nothing to do. In fact, it was I who offered....”
She stopped and looked at him. She seemed to consider her remark complete.
That meeting of the eyes had an oddly disconcerting quality. He tried to keep to the business of the imposition. “You ought not to have done that,” he said, encountering her steadfastly.
She looked down and then into his face again. “No,” she said. “I suppose I ought not to. I’m very sorry.”
Her looking down and up again produced another unreasonable effect. It seemed to Lewisham that they were discussing something quite other than the topic of their conversation; a persuasion patently absurd and only to be accounted for by the general disorder of his faculties. He made a serious attempt to keep his footing of reproof.
“I should have detected the writing, you know.”
“Of course you would. It was very wrong of me to persuade him. But I did—I assure you. He seemed in such trouble. And I thought—”
She made another break, and there was a faint deepening of colour in her cheeks. Suddenly, stupidly, his own adolescent cheeks began
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