Jim would not have needed to ask me a thing like that!
After what seemed a long time of suspense Sir Beverley came to tell us the news—looking like a strong-faced, middle-aged pierrot in his surgeon's "make-up."
"All's well," he said. "They've both stood it grandly; and now they're asleep. I thought you'd like to hear it from me, myself."
Then he looked from us to the Jenningses, whom he had never seen before. I introduced them, and for the first time I became aware of what Gaby Lorraine could be when she wished intensely to charm a man. She radiated some subtle attraction of sex—deliberately radiated it, and without one spoken word. She hadn't tried that "stunt" on my Jim, and if she had on Ralston Murray I hadn't been there to see. There was something she wanted to get out of Sir Beverley!
CHAPTER IX
THE GOOD NEWS
I thought I knew what that "something" was. I thought that Gaby wished to "tame" Sir Beverley, and make him so much her slave that he would appoint Paul to understudy him with Murray. I chuckled as I "deduced" this ambition, for poor Gaby was in blissful ignorance of a certain conversation I'd had with Sir Beverley.
"She'll find him a hard nut to crack," I said to myself. Still, I suffered some bad moments in the month that followed. The Jenningses were as often at the Manor as we were, and Gaby came frequently alone, seldom failing to see Sir Beverley. He did seem to admire her, and to like Paul well enough to worry me.
"Will he stick to his point about his own doctor?" I wondered. But when the time came to prove his strength of mind, he did stick.