Self-controlled as she was, Lady Jim shuddered. Demetrius certainly held the key of death, and had used it--for so she began to believe--in opening for Garth a door into the unknown. However, she utilised the shudder very dexterously. "Don't talk like that. It makes me fear lest Jim should never get well. But after all, M. Demetrius is extraordinarily clever. I told your daughter, only this afternoon, how I had been attracted to him for Jim's sake, and by his knowledge of consumption."
"Oh!" Aksakoff looked at her with his pale eyes, and very inquiringly. It had not occurred to him that the lady was a model wife. "The medical attainments of M. Demetrius attracted you."
"Naturally! My husband is ill. I wish him to be cured. M. Demetrius has a European reputation for cure of consumption. We have held many conversations on the subject, and I feel certain that there is a chance for poor dear Jim."
"If M. Demetrius becomes his medical attendant?"
"He is," Leah assured him. "The poor creature he was looking after in Madeira, on behalf of the Duke, is dead, and Katinka informed me that M. Demetrius had sailed for Jamaica."
Aksakoff frowned. "How does my daughter know that?"
Lady Jim rose to shrug her shoulders, and to seize the opportunity thus offered to solve her problem by means of a private conversation.
"A charming place you have here," she said, glancing round, and giving him to understand that the shrug was his answer; "the air is so balmy."
"You will find it more so without tobacco smoke," said the Russian, throwing away his cigarette, and, without knowing it, was thus skilfully entrapped into a duologue by an ostensibly reluctant woman.
"I am so comfortable here," urged Leah, with feigned hesitation.