“I can only judge him as I have found him,” she said, wondering whether Colin’s firm faith in his friend had really a power to bring out the best side of Ferrers’ character. Colin looked for good in him, and found it; she expected nothing better than lack of sympathy and consideration, and duly met with it. Was she herself in part to blame for the unsatisfactory features of his conduct? If she had been able to love him and believe in him with the whole-hearted confidence he had inspired in her as a child, if she could have continued to regard him as an ideal hero, accepting his careless favours with rapture, and never dreaming of demanding more affection than he chose to give, he might possibly have developed into the being she believed him. Possibly, but not probably. An unreasoning devotion would in all likelihood have wearied him, even if her sharp eyes had not beheld the flaws in his armour; but it was not possible to Penelope to go about with her eyes shut. Perfection she did not expect, but Ferrers could never have satisfied her now that she was no longer a child, even had his deficiencies, not been accentuated by the contrast with that other lover of whom she strove conscientiously not to think, but whose very faults she owned to herself that she loved.
For some time after her explanation with Colin, the subject of Ferrers was not mentioned between them. Colin had discarded the idea of writing to him, lest the letter should be lost or fall into the wrong hands; but there was a tacit understanding that he was to meet him as soon as he returned to India, and tell him everything. Even this unsettled state of affairs brought comfort to Penelope. Her cheerfulness returned, and she was uneasily conscious that Colin must think her absolutely heartless when he heard her talking and laughing with Lady Haigh, who was quite aware that he was inclined to consider her Penelope’s evil genius. But one day there came news that put an effectual end to all cheerfulness for the time. Penelope was crossing the hall when she heard Sir Dugald, who was just coming out of the drawing-room, talking to Colin.
“After all,” he was saying, “it’s much too soon to give up hope. Many things might happen to interrupt communications. He may even be on his way back already.”
A groan from Colin was the only answer, and Penelope asked anxiously, “What is it, Sir Dugald? Is anything the matter?”
He looked at her before answering, and the look convinced her that Lady Haigh kept him informed, possibly against his will, of the course of affairs. “We are anxious for news of Ferrers,” he said. “Since the letter which told of his arrival at Gamara, neither the Government nor any one else has had a word from him.”
“And they think——?”
“They think—but we trust they are beginning to despond too soon—that he may have shared poor Whybrow’s fate, whatever it was.”
For a moment—a moment for which she could never forgive herself—Penelope was conscious of an involuntary feeling of relief. No more of those letters, which had caused her such indignant misery at first, with their calm assumption of the writer’s authority over her, and their wealth of affectionate epithets (mentally repudiated by the recipient), and which she had felt as a constant reproach since her talk with Colin. Then came a quick revulsion of feeling. To what horrors was she willing to doom this man who had loved her, merely to save herself humiliation and discomfort? She ran into the drawing-room, where Colin was lying on his couch with his face to the wall.
“Colin, he must be saved!” she cried. “Don’t let us lose time. They waited so long after the news of poor Mr Whybrow’s disappearance before doing anything. Can’t he be ransomed? There is Saadullah Kermani, the trader—he travels to Gamara, and would arrange it. I will give all my money—it isn’t much in the year, but we could realise the investments, couldn’t we?—and my pearl necklace is worth a good deal, and there are my brooches and things. You would give what you could, wouldn’t you? and I know Elma would help. Oh, and there is Mr Crayne. We can get quite enough money together, surely?”
“It’s not a question of money.” Colin turned a white, drawn face towards his sister. “If we knew that he, or Whybrow either, was in prison, there might be some hope. Whether he was seized in order to extort money or political concessions, we might come to terms. But if he disappears, as Whybrow did, without leaving a trace, and the Khan’s government deny that they know anything about him, what can we say? The only thing is for some one to go and search for him, and it must be done.”