But unforeseen action on the part of old Anna Cassaba suddenly hastened events. She let her house in Brighton for an indefinite period, and announced her return to Smyrna. A lawsuit had arisen over some property which Minna’s Syrian mother had bequeathed to the old nurse, and which formed the chief source of her comfortable income. Anna was summoned to look after her interests. The nostalgia of her native East, which she had not visited for over twenty years, grew strong upon her. She could not tell how long she might be absent from England.
Minna contemplated her departure with sinking heart. Anna was the saving spar to which she clung. Sheltering her, temporarily, in her own dressing-room at The Lindens, Minna wept in her arms and implored a speedy return. The old nurse cried, too, and spoke of death, as old folks will, and comforted her in such wise that at last the girl grew desperate in her anticipated desolation. The result was a sudden determination that Hugh should speak.
“I have come to the end of my tether,” she said to him. “Anything would be better than this. I’ll get papa to ask you to dinner. He likes you, and has been enquiring why you come so seldom now.”
In the course of a day or two he received and accepted an invitation for the following Monday. He felt happier. The die was cast. If Hart called him a scamp for thus tricking him out of five thousand pounds, he would bear it as an atoning humiliation for Minna’s sake. He prepared to go through the ordeal with an air of disdain. But in his category of scorn he himself was included.
CHAPTER VII
“H E saved Gerard’s life? What nonsense! If he had, I should have heard about it.”
Irene spoke warmly. The person she addressed was Harroway, an elderly solicitor, an intimate friend of Hugh and the Merriams. His wife Selina, who had brought him to pay an afternoon call on Irene, watched with amused serenity the discomfiture on his broad and benevolent face.
“It isn’t nonsense,” he protested. “I’m not in the habit of talking nonsense, I assure you. Am I, Selina?”