“Wait till George comes back. Meanwhile, hold your tongue.”
“I shall contradict that lie.”
“Much better not. Don’t write to them, or see them, or let anybody else till George comes back. And, Gerald, if I were you, I shouldn’t quarrel with George.”
“He shall withdraw it, or prove it.”
Mr. Blodwell shrugged his shoulders and became ostentatiously busy with the case of Pigg v. the Local Board of Slushton-under-Mudd. “A very queer point this,” he remarked. “The drainage system of Slushton is——” And he stopped with a chuckle at the sight of Gerald’s vanishing back. He called after him—
“Are you going to Mrs. Witt’s this afternoon?”
“No,” answered Gerald. “This evening.”
Mr. Blodwell sat at work for ten minutes more. Then he rang the bell.
“Mr. Neston gone, Timms?”
“Yes, sir.”