"I am going. Miss Blanchflower stays behind, because her maid is ill."
He stood hesitating. Gertrude lifted her eyebrows as though he puzzled her. She never had liked him, and by now all her instincts were hostile to him. His clumsy figure, and slovenly dress offended her, and the touch of something grandiose in his heavy brow, and reddish-gold hair, seemed to her merely theatrical. Her information was that he had been no use as a campaigner. Why on earth did he keep her waiting?
"I suppose you have heard some of the talk going about?" he said at last, shooting out the words.
"What talk?"
"They're very anxious about Monk Lawrence—after your speech. And there are absurd stories. Women have been seen—at night—and so on."
Gertrude laughed.
"The more panic the better—for us."
"Yes—so long as it stops there. But if anything happened to that place, the whole neighbourhood would turn detective—myself included."
He looked at her steadily. She leant one thin hand on a table behind her.
"No one of course would have a better chance than you. You are so near."