He dressed quickly and was not mistaken in his belief that Mrs. Falkener would have done the same. She was waiting for him in the drawing-room. They had a clear fifteen minutes before dinner.
"Now tell me, my dear Solon," she said, "just what you think of the situation."
"I think badly of it."
"Yes," said Mrs. Falkener, not yet quite appreciating the seriousness of his tone. "I do, myself. That idiotic housemaid, Lily—I could have told him that name would never do—hooked me twice wrong, and left my daughter's dirty boots on top of her best tea-gown."
"Ah, if incompetence were all we had to complain of!"
"The cook?"
"Is perfection, as far as cooking goes. But in other respects—Really, my dear Mrs. Falkener, I am in doubt whether you should let your daughter stay in this house—at least, until Burton comes to his senses."
"You must tell me just what you mean."
Tucker decided to tell the story reluctantly.
"Why, it happened this afternoon, Burton was away with his horses, and quite by accident I came upon his pretty cook in the arms of a strange young man, a person vastly her social superior, one of the young landholders of the neighborhood, I should say. Seemed to assume the most confident right to be in Burton's kitchen—a man he may know in the hunting field, may have to dinner to-morrow. I don't know who he is, but certainly a gentleman."