“Yes,” added her mother, “If you could manage to stop it all, you would certainly be a public benefactor, Mr. Falconer. I read in the American papers I get over some very nasty things about you here—all of it emanating, no doubt, from enemy and revolutionary sources.”
“Ah! Mrs. Beverley,” exclaimed the young Marconi man, “I’m afraid that such a task is beyond me. In the first place, nobody can get into Russia just now. Again, if the station were wrecked, Lenin’s people would soon rig up another. So I fear that we are suggesting the impossible.”
Later that evening, when Geoffrey and Sylvia were alone together in the morning-room—the others being in the big upstairs drawing-room—the girl mentioned that the odious fortune-hunter, Lord Hendlewycke, was to take them by car on the following day to tea at the Burford Bridge Hotel, at Box Hill.
“Oh, how I detest him!” said the pretty girl with a sigh. “And yet mother is for ever asking him here. I’m sick of it all. Wherever we go he turns up.”
“Because your mother has set her mind upon your becoming Lady Hendlewycke,” he said in a low, intense voice. “Why is she in London—except to marry you to somebody with a title? I know it’s a very horrid way of putting it, dearest, but nevertheless it is the truth.”
“I know,” she sighed. “But I hate the fellow—I hate him! I’m for ever having headaches, and pretending a chill in order to avoid meeting him. But he is so horribly persistent.”
He took her in his strong arms and kissed her fondly, saying:
“Never mind. Be patient, dearest. He will grow weary very soon. Be patient—for my sake!”
But at that moment the footman entered, and springing apart, they rejoined the others upstairs.
Geoffrey could only remain for half an hour, as he had to catch his train from Liverpool Street. He was back at Warley just before eleven. His sombre old home was all quiet, for the servants had retired, and his father was busy writing in his study when Geoffrey entered.