For a time Ann Veronica's family had desisted from direct offers of a free pardon; they were evidently waiting for her resources to come to an end. Neither father, aunt, nor brothers made a sign, and then one afternoon in early February her aunt came up in a state between expostulation and dignified resentment, but obviously very anxious for Ann Veronica's welfare. "I had a dream in the night," she said. "I saw you in a sort of sloping, slippery place, holding on by your hands and slipping. You seemed to me to be slipping and slipping, and your face was white. It was really most vivid, most vivid! You seemed to be slipping and just going to tumble and holding on. It made me wake up, and there I lay thinking of you, spending your nights up here all alone, and no one to look after you. I wondered what you could be doing and what might be happening to you. I said to myself at once, 'Either this is a coincidence or the caper sauce.' But I made sure it was you. I felt I MUST do something anyhow, and up I came just as soon as I could to see you."
She had spoken rather rapidly. "I can't help saying it," she said, with the quality of her voice altering, "but I do NOT think it is right for an unprotected girl to be in London alone as you are."
"But I'm quite equal to taking care of myself, aunt."
"It must be most uncomfortable here. It is most uncomfortable for every one concerned."
She spoke with a certain asperity. She felt that Ann Veronica had duped her in that dream, and now that she had come up to London she might as well speak her mind.
"No Christmas dinner," she said, "or anything nice! One doesn't even know what you are doing."
"I'm going on working for my degree."
"Why couldn't you do that at home?"
"I'm working at the Imperial College. You see, aunt, it's the only possible way for me to get a good degree in my subjects, and father won't hear of it. There'd only be endless rows if I was at home. And how could I come home--when he locks me in rooms and all that?"
"I do wish this wasn't going on," said Miss Stanley, after a pause. "I do wish you and your father could come to some agreement."
Ann Veronica responded with conviction: "I wish so, too."
"Can't we arrange something? Can't we make a sort of treaty?"
"He wouldn't keep it. He would get very cross one evening and no one would dare to remind him of it."
"How can you say such things?"
"But he would!"
"Still, it isn't your place to say so."
"It prevents a treaty."
"Couldn't I make a treaty?"
Ann Veronica thought, and could not see any possible treaty that would leave it open for her to have quasi-surreptitious dinners with Ramage or go on walking round the London squares discussing Socialism with Miss Miniver toward the small hours. She had tasted freedom now, and so far she had not felt the need of protection. Still, there certainly was something in the idea of a treaty.
"I don't see at all how you can be managing," said Miss Stanley, and Ann Veronica hastened to reply, "I do on very little." Her mind went back to that treaty.
"And aren't there fees to pay at the Imperial College?" her aunt was saying--a disagreeable question.
"There are a few fees."
"Then how have you managed?"
"Bother!" said Ann Veronica to herself, and tried not to look guilty. "I was able to borrow the money."
"Borrow the money! But who lent you the money?"
"A friend," said Ann Veronica.
She felt herself getting into a corner. She sought hastily in her mind for a plausible answer to an obvious question that didn't come. Her aunt went off at a tangent. "But my dear Ann Veronica, you will be getting into debt!"
Ann Veronica at once, and with a feeling of immense relief, took refuge in her dignity. "I think, aunt," she said, "you might trust to my self-respect to keep me out of that."
For the moment her aunt could not think of any reply to this counterstroke, and Ann Veronica followed up her advantage by a sudden inquiry about her abandoned boots.
But in the train going home her aunt reasoned it out.
"If she is borrowing money," said Miss Stanley, "she MUST be getting into debt. It's all nonsense. . . ."