Lady Oxted considered this in silence a moment.
"Yes, that is true," she said; "yet, somehow, my flesh misgives me to be allied with that man. O Geoffrey, is it because this awful Luck has cast a spell on us that we imagine Harry surrounded by these intimate and immediate perils? Are our fears real? Let us tell ourselves that we are ordinary people, living in an age of prose and police-men; we are not under the Doges! This is the nineteenth century," she said, rising, "or the twentieth, if you will; we look out on Grosvenor Square—a hansom is driving by."
She stopped suddenly.
"I am wrong," she said; "it is not driving by. It has stopped at the door. And Dr. Armytage has rung the bell. Oh, what shall I do?" she cried. "God in heaven! what are we to do? What has he come to tell us?"
Geoffrey got up.
"Now quietly, quietly, Lady Oxted," he said. "He has come on a matter of importance, or he would have waited till I returned to Orchard Street. I have decided to trust him, and I suggest, therefore, that we see him together. It is our best chance; it may be our only one."
"But I don't trust him," said Lady Oxted. "I distrust him from head to heels." And she bit her finger nails, a thing she had not done since the days of the schoolroom.
"Very well; then I shall run on my own lines," and he got up to leave the room.
"Wait, Geoffrey," she said. "You are absolutely determined?"
"Absolutely."