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'You will understand, Mr Lessingham, that, in future, I don't know you, and that I shall decline to recognise you anywhere; and that what I say applies equally to any member of my family. With his hat very much on the back of his head he went down the steps like an inflated turkeycock.
'It seems to me, Lessingham, that you have lately come across some uncommonly interesting data, of a kind, too, which it is your bounden duty to give to the world, or, at any rate, to that portion of the world which is represented by me. Come, tell us all about it! what are you afraid of? 'I am afraid of nothing, and some day you shall be told, but not now. At present, answer my question.
When a man speaks with an Apostle's tongue, he can witch any woman in the land. Hallo, who's that? Lessingham, is that you? I saw, or thought I saw, someone, or something, glide up the steps, and withdraw into the shadow of the doorway, as if unwilling to be seen. When I hailed no one answered. I called again. 'Don't be shy, my friend!
At that distance it was impossible to see the tightening of his lips and the steely flash in his blue eyes. "The whiting seem to have brought him a long way," Philippa said, with an unnatural little laugh. "Shall I go and speak to him?" Lessingham asked. "For heaven's sake, no!" she insisted. "Don't leave me. I wouldn't have him come near me for anything in the world.
You possess the one insuperable obstacle of having the instincts of a gentleman. Come, come," he went on, "we have nothing more to say to one another. Open that window and take the narrow path down to the beach. Jimmy Dumble is waiting for you at the gate. He will row you out to a Dutch trawler which is lying even now off the point." "You mean me to get away?" Lessingham exclaimed, bewildered.
I have quite enough discouragement in my attempts at painting, as it is." M. Silvenoire was bowing low, as Mrs. Lessingham presented him. To his delight, he heard his own language fluently, idiomatically spoken; he remarked, too, that Mrs. Elgar had a distinct pleasure in speaking it. She seated herself, and flattered him into ecstasies by the respect with which she received his every word.
Helen smiled with complete self-possession. "Well, we can set his mind at rest about Mr. Lessingham, can't we?" she observed, as she shook hands. "We can do more," Philippa declared. "We can help him to judge for himself. We are expecting Mr. Lessingham for dinner, Captain Griffiths. Do stay."
"You will still have friends here." Mallard disliked the tone of this. "Oh yes," he replied. "I hope to see Mrs. Lessingham and Mrs. Elgar sometimes." He paused; then added: "I dare say I shall return to England about the same time that they do. May I hope to see you in London?" "I am quite uncertain where I shall be." "Then perhaps we shall not meet for a long time.
"Philippa is a dear," Helen declared enthusiastically. "Just for a moment, though, I was terrified. She has a wonderful will." "How long has she been married?" "About six years." "Are there any children?" Helen shook her head. "Sir Henry had a daughter by his first wife, who lives with us." "Six years!" Lessingham repeated. "Why, she seems no more than a child.
And now, here was Paul Lessingham, a man of world-wide reputation, of great intellect, of undoubted honour, who had come to me with a wholly unconscious verification of all my worst suspicions! That the creature spoken of as an Arab, and who was probably no more an Arab than I was, and whose name was certainly not Mohamed el Kheir! was an emissary from that den of demons, I had no doubt.
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