'I am ashamed—I don't know how to thank you.'
'No time shall be lost.' He rose. 'If Mrs. Handover will help us, I will bring her here; then I shall see you again. In any case, of course, I will come back—there will be other business. But you ought to have some friend—some lady.'
'There's no one I can ask.'
'Oh, but of all the people you know in London—surely!'
'They are not friends in that sense. I understand it now—fifty acquaintances; no friend.'
'But let me think—let me think. What was the name of that lady I met here, whose children you used to teach?'
'Mrs. Langland. She is very kind and friendly, but she lives at Gunnersbury—so far—and I couldn't trouble her.'
Upon one meeting and a short conversation, with subsequent remarks from Edgar Abbott, Rolfe had grounded a very favourable opinion of Mrs Langland. She dwelt clearly in his mind as 'a woman with no nonsense about her', likely to be of much helpfulness at a crisis such as the present. With difficulty he persuaded Mrs. Abbott to sit down and write a few lines, to be posted at once to Gunnersbury.
'I haven't dared to ask her to come. But I have said that I am alone.'
'Quite enough, I think, if she is at home.'