Maxwell pondered. "Yes, the clergyman. The solicitor-brother is too far away. Your idea is to stop the girl from crossing?"
"If it were still possible." Fontenoy dropped his voice, and his gesture induced Maxwell to follow him to the recess of a distant window.
"The chief difficulty, perhaps," said Fontenoy, resuming, "concerns the lad himself. His mother, you will understand, cannot run any risk of being brought in contact with that woman. Nor is she physically fit for the voyage; but someone must go, if only to content her. There has been some wild talk of suicide, apparently—mere bombast, of course, like so much of it, but she has been alarmed."
"Do you propose, then, to go yourself?"
"I am of no use," said Fontenoy, decisively.
Maxwell had cause to know that the statement was true, and did not press him. They fell into a rapid consultation.
Meanwhile, Marcella had drawn Mrs. Allison to the sofa beside her, and was attempting a futile task of comfort. Mrs. Allison answered in monosyllables, glancing hither and thither. At last she said in a low, swift voice, as though addressing herself, rather than her companion, "If all fails, I have made up my mind. I shall leave his house. I can take nothing more from him."
Marcella started. "But that would deprive you of all chance, all hope of influencing him," she said, her eager, tender look searching the other woman's face.
"No; it would be my duty," said Mrs. Allison, simply, crossing her hands upon her lap. Her delicate blue eyes, swollen with weeping, the white hair, of which a lock had escaped from its usual quiet braids and hung over her blanched cheeks, her look at once saintly and indomitable—every detail of her changed aspect made a chill and penetrating impression. Marcella began to understand what the Christian might do, though the mother should die of it.
Meanwhile she watched the two men at the other side of the room, with a manifest eagerness for their return. Presently, indeed, she half rose and called: