"Oh, yes, I'll drive you. There's a dry place for your violin. You can trust me. This is my own horse and we understand each other. It's awfully good of you to come to us. You don't usually, do you, but I did so particularly want you." Frank Weston gradually took in the situation.
"My agent said a Miss Whitburn--wanted----"
"Yes, that's all right, that's me. When your agent said, 'It will only be a big price that will tempt him,' I said, 'Go ahead!'" Toney spoke so simply that Mr. Weston smiled.
"I may as well own it at once," he said. "It was the money that tempted me. There is a poor friend of mine whose career is cut short in a terrible manner. He has creeping paralysis coming on from over-work. He's too young for the charitable societies to come to his help, so----"
"So you are going to do it! Oh, isn't that lovely! I am glad you told me, I'll just double the fee if that will set him up."
Frank stared at this unusually generous girl.
"Oh, but you are already paying a very heavy fee for--a very short time. I expect you are one of the amateurs who have all the fine feelings of the professional--finer often, because unconnected with public recognition." He lifted his head and smiled, then became conscious that Miss Whitburn was flying along the country roads at a furious pace.
"Oh, gracious stars! don't think so for a moment about me! I don't know one note from another, but I've got a friend who feels all that, at least I suppose so. I do want you to be--sort of friendly with her, because I've got it all up for her."
"All for your friend? How extraordinary!" said the genius, "but, forgive me for asking, is your horse running away? I'm no good with horses." There was a touch of anxiety in his voice. He heard a rippling laugh near him.
"Don't you like it? I'll pull him in, but it's the pace I like! Suppose, Mr. Weston, you were driving with your--say your intended, would you be afraid for her?"
Mr. Weston turned towards Toney with a look of dismayed surprise.
"I--have not--got one--I really can't say."
"I'm awfully glad, I half feared you might be engaged, you know---- People say you are tremendously run after. If you had been, of course I should have asked _her_ too. You don't mind my saying this, do you? I'm only an Australian girl, and out there we don't mince matters so much as people do here, and I once heard that--that you were going to marry a girl and that she----" Toney cleared her throat. She glanced at the genius whose marble-cut face was lifted towards the sky with a hard strange look on it. No one had ever dared to speak to him about that episode since it happened, and here was a strange girl introducing the subject! The very boldness of it put him off his guard.