He did not appear to understand the code. He stared at her with a frown, and rasped on seriously—
"I find a few comical jokes occasionally a great relief after my heavy work. It is very deep work."
"I suppose it would be indiscreet to ask what the invention is?" said Valentia, smiling.
"Not at all. There is nothing indiscreet whatever in your curiosity, Mrs. Wyburn."
He took a scone covered with butter and swallowed it in an extraordinarily short time, and in an ingenious manner.
"No, there's no indiscretion in the matter at all. Do not trouble yourself on that score. It is merely the natural interest that a cultivated and intellectual English lady would naturally take when she hears of an extraordinary invention from another country." He bowed, and having thus explained her to herself, he then ate another scone.
"She say she want to know, you know," nodded Mrs. Campbell, putting up a playful and threatening finger with dignified coquetry and a stony smile. (She was subject to fits of this kind of marble archness unexpectedly.)
"Yes. So I understood."
The Belgian was looking at Daphne with distinct admiration. Of course Miss Campbell came and sat down beside him. Women always follow their instinct to come and sit on the other side of any man whom they regard as their property. They seem to think that merely by sitting on the other side they protect him from freebooters. As a matter of fact, it would be more sensible, if to distract his attention were the object, to sit opposite with some one else.
Mr. Stoendyck turned his back on her completely, and said to Daphne—