He was so concerned with the problem filling both their minds for the moment he forgot his usual punctiliousness of speech, but to Lady Wantley there came a certain fierce comfort from his amazing frankness. She felt that he knew, that he understood, the unusual difficulty of the case, and in answer to his next words, 'I had actually forgotten all that for the moment, but of course it complicates matters devilishly!' she nodded her head twice in assent.
'You see them together,' he went on abruptly. 'Does she seem'—sought for a word, weighed one or two, rejected them, and finally chose 'bewitched?'
And then—but this time so much to himself that his listener heard no word of it—he added: 'Lucky George! Eh? Lucky George!'
Lady Wantley bent forward. Her grey eyes shone with excitement and anger. 'Yes, bewitched—that's the right word! Sir George Downing has bewitched my poor unhappy child. One who was there, our old nurse—you remember Mrs. Mote?—declares that she altered completely from the moment they first met. Why, she hasn't known him three months, and yet he's persuaded her to contemplate this thing—this going with him——'
She stopped speaking abruptly, choked with the horror of the thought, and then slowly added: 'I know—at least, I think I know—that you do not believe, as I believe, in the active, all-devouring power of the Evil One.' Her voice sank, but Mr. Gumberg caught the muttered words, 'Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.'
Mr. Gumberg smiled a queer little enigmatical smile. 'The old nurse was there, you say? She never left her mistress, eh?' He waited, and looked hard at Lady Wantley. But no gleam of comprehension of his meaning came into her worn eyes. 'What does she think? what does the old nurse say to it all?'
Again Lady Wantley covered her face with her hands. 'She's known it all longer than I have. She's in agony—agony, for she feels surer every day that the child means to go away with him—soon—at once—if we cannot devise some means of stopping them.'
'I take it that you have said nothing to your daughter—to Penelope—as yet?'
Lady Wantley raised her head, and he saw for a moment her convulsed, disfigured features. 'No, I have said nothing. I cannot speak to her on such a matter as this. Besides, she would not tolerate it. But you, dear friend——'
She suddenly rose from her chair, a tall, imposing figure, then moved closer to him, and looked imploringly down into the wrinkled, impassive face. 'I have thought that you, perhaps, would consent to speak to Sir George Downing? I know it is asking much of your old friendship for us.'