"Madame is quite right," he said; "he should have returned. It is very necessary for him to be here these days; he will lose a great deal of money if he behaves so foolishly; would that Madame told him as much!"
"I?" exclaimed Lily, turning her large eyes upon him. "But, surely, Mr. Benson would not listen to a woman?"
"He would listen to you," Jack rejoined with emphasis. "He thinks a good deal of your opinion—he told me so."
She smiled, but turned away her eyes nevertheless. "And what am I to say to your brother?"
"Tell him that he can do it yet, if he will only believe as much. Say that it's not the game for him to be here, there and everywhere when his future depends on what we're doing for him. If he wins the ten thousand pounds put up by the London daily paper, he's a made man for life. There's nothing Benny could not do with capital, nothing on earth, I do believe. Why, he's invented a dozen machines as clever as this, and all of them are just so many drawings, because he hasn't got the money to build them. And here's ten thousand going begging, so to speak, and he's dreaming all the time; acting like some moonsick shepherdess, and got just about as much sense in his head. If you'd tell him that, you'd be doing him a very great kindness, Mrs. Kennaird. There's no one else at Andana who could do it, I assure you."
Lily looked from one to the other: her face was very pale, her manner unusually earnest.
"And what does Monsieur l'Abbé say?"
The abbé ceased to work at the canvas upon his knee.
"I think that Madame is the only person who could help us," he said at length; and having said it he cast down his eyes and went on with his work. She was a clever woman, and she would understand that, he thought. Nor was he mistaken. Madame understood him perfectly.
"I see Mr. Benson so rarely," she said. "Now that I have left the hotel my opportunities will be fewer. But that is not to say that I will not do my best when I do see him, if you care to tell him so."