He couldn't, in fact, bear the thought of it.
"Better still," he said, "send her away. Is there anybody you could
send her to?"
"Only Mummy--my stepmother." She smiled through her tears. "Papa would
never let Ally go to _her_."
"Why not?"
"Because she ran away from him."
He tried not to laugh.
"She's really quite decent, though you mightn't think it." Rowcliffe
smiled. "And she's fond of Ally. She's fond of all of us--except Papa.
And," she added, "she knows a lot of people."
He smiled again. He pictured the third Mrs. Cartaret as a woman of
affectionate gaiety and a pleasing worldliness, so well surrounded by
adorers of his own sex that she could probably furnish forth her three
stepdaughters from the numbers of those she had no use for. He was
more than ever disgusted with the Vicar who had driven from him a
woman so admirably fitted to play a mother's part.
"She sounds," he said, "as if she'd be the very one."
"She would be. It's an awful pity."
"Well," he said, "we won't talk any more about it now. We'll think of
something. We simply _must_ get her away."
He was thinking that he knew of somebody--a doctor's widow--who
also would be fitted. If they could afford to pay her. And if they
couldn't, he would very soon have the right----
That was what his "we" meant.
Presently he excused himself and went out to see, he said, about
getting her some tea. He judged that if she were left alone for a
moment she would pull herself together and be as ready as ever for
their walk back to Garthdale.
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