"Ah! you are shocked," said Lady Oxted, "but wait a moment. Do you remember what you told me about Dr. Godfrey and Dr. Armytage? Geoffrey, what is that sinister man doing at Vail? He is appalling, I tell you. He is one of the black spots on the medical profession. Heart specialist! He is a surgeon of terrible dexterity--unscrupulous, venal. What does Mr. Francis want with him?"
"I will hear no more," he said, in a tremulous voice. "It is you who suggest things that I have to put into words. Tell me what you mean; say straight out what you suspect?"
"If I knew what I suspected, I would tell you," she said. "But I can't make out what it is. At any rate we have talked long enough for the present."
She paused a moment, then broke out again, her own anxiety--how deep she had never known till this minute--breaking all bounds.
"Promise me this," she cried. "Promise me you will be a good friend to Harry. Be much with him, be observant--not suspicious, but observant. Remember that I am afraid, though I do not know what of. See if you can not find out what it is that I fear. There, that is enough. You promise me that, Geoffrey?"
"I will not play detective," said he. "I both like and honour that old man."
"I do not ask you to play detective," she said. "I pray that your liking and honour for Mr. Francis may never be diminished. But be much with Harry, and be full of common sense. Come!"
Harry left London at the end of the month, paid a couple of visits in England, then went to Scotland for the remainder of August, and loitered there, since he was at the same two houses as Evie till September had reached its second decade of days, and then travelled south again with her. She was on her way straight to Santa Margarita to spend the remainder of the month of months with her mother, and Harry saw her off by the boat express from Victoria, she having sternly and absolutely refused to let him do anything so foolish as to travel to Dover with her.
"You would propose coming to Calais next," she said, "and Calais is but a step to Paris. I know you, Harry. And--and how I hate the journey, and how I should love it if you were with me!"
"Not even to Herne Hill," and the train slid out of the vaulted gloom of the station.