Master of Melincourt by Susan Barrie

even—I say might ! —agree to let you teach me to ride! And I’ll certainly make an effort to understand Tina a little more... if,” she concluded, “you promise you won’t punish her for what she did the other night!”
    His answer to this request took some time to be thought out, and while he was doing so he paced up and down the room, with its shabby well-used furniture and attempts at brightness in the form of new floral curtains and a bowl of flowers which Edwina herself had arranged only that morning, and his black brows were very bent, and his whole expression brooding.
    But at the end of five minutes he returned to her, and he spoke briefly but to the point.
    “Very well, I won’t punish her this t ime.”
    Edwina beamed up at him happily.
    “And there won’t ever be another time, because Tina, I’m sure, has learned her lesson. She knows very well that if you send me away I might be replaced by someone she can like even less.”
    “If I send you away she’ll go to school.”
    Edwina made a little movement with her hands in her lap.
    “Well, one day, of course she’ll have to be sent away to school I think a child like Tina will benefit from the disciplined life of a boarding-school ... provided, of course, that it’s well run, and the sort of place where she can settle down. But she’s too young, yet, to be sent away to school.”
    “So you’ll stay and look after her ? ”
    “Until someone else can take over from me.”
    “You said just now that she might take exception to ‘someone else.’ ”
    Edwina looked uncomfortable ... particularly as she couldn’t help calling to mind the little scene on the terrace earlier in the evening.
    “I wasn’t really thinking of someone else whom you might employ,” she admitted. “I was thinking—”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, Tina needs a mother.”
    “So you’ve said before,” he remarked.
    “I think she needs to feel absolutely secure and wanted.”
    “She’s perfectly well aware that I want her. I don’t know quite why, but I’m devoted to the scrap.”
    “I know.” She smiled up at him. “And, as a matter of fact,” she heard herself adding impulsively, “I’m growing quite fond of her myself.”
    “Despite the fact that she locked you up in the stables ? ”
    “Despite that. Perhaps because of it. Locking me up in the stables frightened her so much that she began to see me in a new light. I’m sure she wishes now that she’d never thought of doing anything of the kind.”
    “I sincerely hope she does.”
    He spoke forcefully, but there was a wryness in his smile just the same.
    “Well, if you can forgive her, I can. But I’ll have a talk with her just the same. Knowing what took place while I was away I simply can’t ignore it, but I promise I won’t lock her up in her own room and keep her on a diet of bread and water for the next few days. It might be the best thing for her, but I shan’t do it.”
    Edwina rose hurriedly and thanked him.
    “I know you can’t. You are almost too good to her in a way,” she told him impulsively.
    “And you allow yourself to be pushed around and won’t allow any action to be taken against her.”
    “I was a coward, and she knew it. She traded on that.”
    “If you have any other weaknesses you mustn’t let her know about them,” he cautioned her, half seriously, half humorously. “You have already had experience of what she can do.”
    They walked together over to the schoolroom door, and he opened it for her. Then he held out his hand.
    “Thank you for being so forbearing, Edwina,” he said very quietly indeed as his fingers closed firmly about hers. “You’re not a coward, you know. I think you were very plucky on the whole. Bennett said you were in very bad shape when he opened the stable door and found you. It took pluck, after that experience, to stay on here ... and it was very noble of you not to complain.”
    Edwina was not entirely certain that he meant what he said, but