For an instant his bearded face looked so strangely at her that she half moved towards the bell. Then he smiled, with a little reassuring gesture.
“No, no,” he said. “May I sit down a moment?”
She began hastily to cover her confusion.
“It is a meeting,” she said, “for this evening. I am sorry—”
“Just so,” he said. “It is about that that I have come.”
“I beg your pardon … ?”
“Please sit down, Lady Laura. … May I say in a sentence what I have come to say?”
(This seemed a very odd old man.)
“Why, yes—” she said.
“I have come to beg you not to allow Mr. Baxter to enter the house. … No, I have no authority from anyone, least of all from Mr. Baxter. He has no idea that I have come. He would think it an unwarrantable piece of impertinence.”
“ Mr. Cathcart … I—I cannot—”
“Allow me,” he said, with a little compelling gesture that silenced her. “I have been asked to interfere by a couple of people very much interested in Mr. Baxter; one of them, if not both, completely disbelieves in Spiritualism.”
“Then you know—”