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Updated: June 11, 2025
"I will let you know before night," I said to Sir Marcus Lark. Fenton's orders were, when the Cairo business should be finished, to go slowly up the Nile in native dress, and get at the truth of certain rumours which had disturbed officialdom at Cairo. At Denderah, Luxor, and two or three other places there had been "incidents," small but troublesome.
If the memory of Fenton's cold, unrecognizing eyes and rigid mouth, as they passed each other in the silence of the Cathedral, had power to cause so deep a stab of pain, how was he to brace himself in the future to what must come? the alienation of friend after friend, the condemnation of the good, the tumult, the poisoned feeling, the abuse, public and private.
She was glad to help her friend, but she felt that she could do so no better from knowing anything Edith could tell her; and she was, moreover, sure that Mrs. Fenton's loyal soul would bitterly regret it if she were by the emotion of the minute betrayed into revelations that involved her husband.
He had been bred-up with no expectation of ever having to take his place in the counting-house, had been educated at Eton and Oxford, and had been taught to anticipate a handsome fortune from his father. All these expectations had been disappointed by Mr. Fenton's sudden death at a period of great commercial disturbance.
He by no means followed all Fenton's vagaries of thought, but they tickled his mental cuticle agreeably. The artist had the name of being a clever talker, and with such a listener this was more than half the battle.
The officers beat them back, and made way for the women as well as they could, struggling at the same time with the difficult task of maintaining discipline among the crew. Shrill amid the uproar, a child's cry smote Fenton's ear as he came out upon the deck.
"If you choose to put it that way," he retorted doggedly, "I must still say yes." It was Friday morning, and Helen was to sail the next day. She had come to Fenton's studio to bid him good-by, knowing that they should have that to say which could not be freely spoken before Edith, and yet not choosing to have him come to her own house without his wife.
There flashed through Fenton's mind all the possibilities of discovery and disaster that might lie behind this remark, and his one strong feeling was that it would be unsafe to venture on a definite statement; he took refuge in the vaguest of general remarks. "I am sorry not to have seen you," he said. He tried to reflect, while Edith said something further in defence of Melissa.
"Oh, I didn't mean that," Mr. Irons answered, easily; "only of course you are a man who has his living to make. Every painter has to depend on his wits, and when you come in contact with men of another class professionally it would be natural enough to suppose you would take advantage of it." The "lady's finger" in Fenton's cheek stood out white amid the sudden red, and his eyes flashed.
The day went by very slowly, although it was the last which those two were to spend together until Gilbert Fenton's return.
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