About that at least he was clear. "Not at all. She's alone, but she's very capable and very courageous. Besides--!" He had been going on, but he dropped.
"Besides," she said, "there's Eugenio? Yes, of course one remembers Eugenio."
She had uttered the words as definitely to show them for not untender; and he showed equally every reason to assent. "One remembers him indeed, and with every ground for it. He'll be of the highest value to her--he's capable of anything. What I was going to say," he went on, "is that some of their people from America must quickly arrive."
On this, as happened, Kate was able at once to satisfy him. "Mr. Someone-or-other, the person principally in charge of Milly's affairs--her first trustee, I suppose--had just got there at Mrs. Stringham's last writing."
"Ah that then was after your aunt last spoke to me--I mean the last time before this morning. I'm relieved to hear it. So," he said, "they'll do."
"Oh they'll do." And it came from each still as if it wasn't what each was most thinking of. Kate presently got however a step nearer to that. "But if you had been wired to by nobody what then this morning had taken you to Sir Luke?"
"Oh something else--which I'll presently tell you. It's what made me instantly need to see you; it's what I've come to speak to you of. But in a minute. I feel too many things," he went on, "at seeing you in this place." He got up as he spoke; she herself remained perfectly still. His movement had been to the fire, and, leaning a little, with his back to it, to look down on her from where he stood, he confined himself to his point. "Is it anything very bad that has brought you?"
He had now in any case said enough to justify her wish for more; so that, passing this matter by, she pressed her own challenge. "Do you mean, if I may ask, that _she_, dying--?" Her face, wondering, pressed it more than her words.
"Certainly you may ask," he after a moment said. "What has come to me is what, as I say, I came expressly to tell you. I don't mind letting you know," he went on, "that my decision to do this took for me last night and this morning a great deal of thinking of. But here I am." And he indulged in a smile that couldn't, he was well aware, but strike her as mechanical.