The man in the white mustache, whom Miss Davison at once recognized, and whose appearance filled her with evident consternation, was, Gerard felt sure, the leader of the organization which was using the unhappy girl for its own illegal ends, and his first care, on noting this, was to hide every sign that he had seen anything.
So he turned to Lady Jennings to give Rachel an opportunity of recovering her composure.
He was still talking to the old lady when Rachel, taking out her watch, said—
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Lady Jennings, that I have to be in the city again this afternoon by four o’clock. I shall only just manage it if I run away now. Do, do forgive me for having forgotten to tell you before.”
But Lady Jennings was in no forgiving mood. The news thus suddenly sprung upon her transformed her at once from an angel of mildness into an embodiment of just indignation. Drawing herself up, she said—
“This is the third time during the last few days that you have done this, Rachel, disappointed me at the very moment when we have been going out together! I can’t understand how you can make appointments and forget them in this manner. Even if I, who don’t pretend to be a woman of business, were to do so, I should soon be in a state of hopeless confusion as to what I had to do and where I had to go.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Rachel meekly. But even as she spoke she was walking to the door. “But really you don’t know how difficult it is to reconcile the two conditions, and to be a woman of business and a woman of leisure at the same time.”
She went out of the room without giving time for any more discussion, and Lady Jennings turned to Gerard indignantly. The young man had a sympathetic manner, and old ladies always found in him an interested hearer.
“Isn’t it too bad of that girl,” she asked, “to treat me in this manner? I make every allowance for the fact that she is a busy woman, and that business appointments have to take precedence of social engagements with her. But when she has expressly asked me to take her to call on certain people, and at the last moment she throws me over like this, I really feel that I have just reason to complain. One can’t treat a duchess in this way, whatever one’s position may be, and it was to meet the Duchess of Beachborough that I was going to take her this afternoon.”
“Don’t you think,” suggested Gerard gently, “that it is because she is overworked that she is rather erratic in her ways just now? It seems to me that she looks paler every time I see her, and that her face has grown very much sharper in outline even during the past few weeks. Couldn’t you persuade her to take a rest from business, and to go away for a thorough change? I feel it would do her all the good in the world. Six months abroad, for instance, might make a new woman of her.”