Penelope was not a child, to adapt herself to new conditions. Would strange, self-centred Persian Downing compensate her for all she was about to lose? Would this maker of great schemes, this seer of visions, forget himself, in order to be everything to her? For a few moments Wantley, leaning on the low wall which separated the ilex-grove from the cliff overhanging the sea, thought only of Penelope, and of what her life would be if this tragic affair shaped itself in the way that he believed to be now inevitable.
The day he had accompanied her to town, during the long railway journey back to Dorset, Lady Wantley had spoken to him mysteriously as to advice proffered by Mr. Gumberg. She had seemed to think that if all else failed he, Wantley, should speak to Sir George Downing, but to this he had in no way assented.
He turned, and slowly made his way through the pine-trees. The day—nay, even the morning—had to be lived through, and his thoughts were intolerable company—so much so, indeed, that he felt he would prefer to go and find Lady Wantley, and stay with her a while, although he was aware that she would in all probability urge him to interfere. The knowledge that he would have to tell her he could not and would not do so smote him painfully.
Downing and Penelope were not children whose wayward steps could be stayed, with whom at last force could replace argument. A braver than he might well hesitate to face the contemptuous indignation of the eccentric, powerful man, for whom Wantley even now felt kindliness and respect, reserving, unjustly enough, his greatest blame for the woman.
No, no! If Lady Wantley besought his intervention, he must tell her that in this matter he could not hope to succeed where Mr. Gumberg had apparently failed.
III
As Wantley walked along the terrace in front of the villa, past the opened windows of the Picture Room, he saw Lady Wantley sitting in her usual place. But there was about her figure, especially about her hands, which clasped and unclasped themselves across her knee, an unusual look of tension and emotion.
Wantley turned, and drew nearer to the window which seemed to frame the still graceful figure. But she remained quite unconscious that she was being watched. He saw that her lips were moving; he heard her speaking, as she so often did, to herself; and there came to him the conviction that she had been down to the Beach Room, that she had seen Downing, that she had made to him an appeal foredoomed to failure.
A keen desire to know whether he guessed truly, and, if so, to know what had actually taken place, warred for a moment with the young man's horror of a scene, and especially of a scene with Lady Wantley in one of her strange moods.
Suddenly she raised her voice, and he heard clearly the words, uttered in low, intense tones, and as if in answer to an invisible questioner: 'But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour to slay him with guile, thou shalt take him from My altar, that he may die.'