“The Jews!” he murmured at her, with no comprehension in his eyes.
She smiled. “I have been arranging it in my mind. The thing was like a black fog to me when you first spoke. I had to search about for a light before I could make a start. But when I stumbled across the thought, ‘It is the Jews’ work,’ then it was not very hard to make out the rest. I could almost tell you who it is that is to meet you at Brighton. It is Mr. Soman. Is it not?”
He assented with an impulsive movement of head and hands. The gaze that he fixed upon her sparkled with excitement.
“He is Lord Julius’ man of business,” she explained to his further mystification. “No doubt he has had one of those green eyes of his on you ever since you were a fortnight old. It frightens one to think of it—the merciless and unerring precision of their system. Is there anything they don’t know?”
“I am afraid of Jews myself,” he faltered, striving to connect himself with what he dimly perceived of her mood. “But what have they against me? What can they do to me? I owe nothing; they can’t make me responsible for what other people, strangers to me, have done, can they? And why should they give me a thousand francs? It is I,” he finished hopelessly, “I who am in the black fog. Tell me, I beg you, what is it that they want with me?”
She put a reassuring hand upon his arm, and the steady, genial light in her calm eyes brought him instantaneous solace. “You have not the slightest cause for fear,” she told him, gently. “Quite the contrary. They are not going to hurt you. So far from it, they have taken you up; they will wrap you in cotton-wool and nurse you as if you were the Koh-i-noor diamond. You may rest easy, my dear sir; you may close your eyes, and fold your hands, and lean back against Israel as heavily as you like. It is all right so far as you are concerned. But the others”—she paused, and looked seaward with lifted brows and a mouth twisted to express sardonic comment upon some amazing new outlook—“eye-ee! the others!”
“Still you do not tell me!” For the first time she caught in his voice the hint of a virile, and even an imperious note. Behind the half-petulant entreaty of the tired boy, there was a man’s spirit of dictation. She deferred to it unconsciously.
“The Lord Julius that I spoke of is—let me see—he is your great-uncle—your grandfather’s younger brother.”
“But if he is a Jew—” began Christian, in an awed whisper.
“No—no; he is nothing of the sort. That is to say, he is not Jewish in blood. But he married a great heiress of the race—whole millions sterling came to him from the huge fortune of the Aronsons in Holland—and he likes Jewish people—of the right sort. He is an old man now, and his son, Emanuel, has immense influence over him. You should see them sitting together like two love-birds on a perch. They idolize each other, and they both worship Emanuel’s wife. If they weren’t the two best men in the world, and if she weren’t the most remarkable woman anywhere, they would utterly spoil her.”