"Hasn't come in?" cried Mrs. Hazlitt, and looked very severely at him over the banisters.
Freebody had been with her long enough to have learned to withstand the implication that anything he told her was his fault. He moved about, putting the card tray straight.
"Miss Hazlitt went out before you did, madam."
"Alone?"
"After the other gentleman left. Not Mr. Valentine."
"There was no other gentleman but Mr. Valentine."
Freebody, in his irritating way, would not argue with her. She had to begin all over again in order to elicit the facts—a gentleman had come to the house soon after Miss Hazlitt's arrival, and just before the arrival of Mr. Valentine. When he left, Miss Hazlitt had gone directly—Freebody would infer that she had been trying to catch up with him.
"Did she?" asked Mrs. Hazlitt.
"Ah, I couldn't say, madam."