“Oh, stuff! If you think that she and I are such friends—I hope we are—surely——?”
“I don’t think that she would care to receive visits from a member of Lady Dundrannan’s house party.”
“Good Lord, I forgot that!”
“And I certainly wouldn’t take the responsibility of concealing that fact about you—with the chance of her discovering it afterwards. As for you, wouldn’t you get into hot water with both ladies, if your duplicity happened to be discovered? As regards one another, aren’t they a trifle sensitive?” He leaned back in his chair, with an air of amusement at the situation which he had suggested. “Even your little visit to me you thought it judicious to make on the quiet,” he reminded me with a chuckle.
I sat silent; if the truth must be told, I was rather abashed. On reflection—and on a reflection prompted by Monkey Valdez!—what I had been proposing to do seemed not quite the square thing. Anyhow, a doubtful case; it is a good working rule not to do things that you would not like to be found out in.
“Then I suppose I oughtn’t to have come to see you either?”
“Oh, I don’t matter so much. Nina has no animosity against me.” His eyes twinkled. “Still, don’t mention it, there’s a good fellow. You see, she’d question you, and I am rather down on my luck. Lucinda and I both are. I daresay you’ll understand that we shouldn’t care for that to get round through Nina to Waldo?”
That feeling seemed natural and intelligible enough. The contrast between splendor and—well—something like squalor—in view of the past they would hardly wish Lady Dundrannan and her husband to be in a position to draw it.
“Oh, well, what’s done’s done; but you and I had perhaps better not meet any more just for the present.”
“I’ve roused your scruples?” he laughed. “I, the moralist! Just as you like, old fellow. I’m glad you happened to hit on a lucky night—hope you’ve enjoyed the dinner?”