Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders. "She isn't yet reconciled to my being a secretary, if that's what you mean." "I'm sorry," John murmured. "Confound all relations!" he burst out. "I suppose she'd object to your going to France with me to finish off the play?" "She would object violently. But you mustn't forget that I've a will of my own." "Of course you have," said John, admiringly. "And you will go, eh?" "I'll see--I won't promise. Look here, Mr. Touchwood, I don't want to seem--what shall I call it--timid, but if I did go to France with you, I suppose you realize my mother would make such a fuss about it that people would end by really talking? Forgive my putting such an unpleasant idea into your innocent head; being your confidential secretary, I feel I oughtn't to let you run any risks. I don't suppose you care a bit how much people talk, and I'm sure I don't; at the same time I shouldn't like you to turn round on me and say I ought to have warned you." "Talk!" John exclaimed. "The idea is preposterous. Talk! Good gracious me, can't I take my secretary abroad without bring accused of ulterior motives?" "Now, don't work yourself into a state of wrath, or you won't be able to think of this terribly important last scene. Anyway, we sha'n't be going to France yet, and we can discuss the project more fully when the time comes." John thought vaguely how well Miss Hamilton knew how to keep him unruffled, and with a grateful look--or what was meant to be a grateful look, though she blushed unaccountably when he gave it--he concentrated upon the site of his heroine's scaffold. During March the weather was so bright and exhilarating that John and his secretary took many walks together on Hampstead Heath; they also often went to town, and John derived much pleasure from discussing various business affairs with her clerical support; he found that it helped considerably when dealing with the manager of a film company to be able to say "Will you make a note of that, please, Miss Hamilton?" The only place, in fact, to which John did not take her was his club, and that was only because he was not allowed to introduce ladies there. "A rather mediaeval restriction," he observed one day to a group assembled in the smoking-room. "There was a time, Touchwood, when you used to take refuge here from your leading ladies," a bachelor member chuckled. "But nowadays Touchwood has followed Adam with the rest of us," put in another. "What's that?" said John, sharply. There was a general burst of merriment and headshaking and wagging of fingers, from which and a succession of almost ribald comment John began to wonder if his private life was beginning to be a subject for club gossip. He managed to prevent himself from saying that he thought such chaff in bad taste, because he did not wish to give point to it by taking it too much in earnest. Nevertheless, he was seriously annoyed and avoided the smoking-room for a week.