"I shan't suggest anything till I've seen the boy—and I won't promise to then."
Later in the afternoon Southend dropped in at the Imperium, where to his surprise and pleasure he found Iver in the smoking-room. Asked how he came to be in town, Iver explained:
"I really ran away from the cackling down at Blentmouth. All our old ladies are talking fifteen to the dozen about Harry Tristram, and Lady Tristram, and
me, and my family, and—well, I dare say you're in it by now, Southend! There's an old cat named Swinkerton, who is positively beyond human endurance; she waylays me in the street. And Mrs Trumbler, the vicar's wife, comes and talks about Providence to my poor wife every day. So I fled."
"Leaving your wife behind, I suppose?"
"Oh, she doesn't mind Mrs Trumbler. But I do."
"Well, there's a good deal of cackling up here too. But tell me about the new girl." Lord Southend did not appear to consider his own question "cackling" or as tending to produce the same.
"I've only seen her once. She's in absolute seclusion and lets nobody in except Mina Zabriska—a funny little foreign woman—You don't know her."
"I know about her, I saw it in the paper. She had something to do with it?"
"Yes." Iver passed away from that side of the subject immediately. "And she's struck up a friendship with Cecily Gainsborough—Lady Tristram, I ought to say. I had a few words with the father. The poor old chap doesn't know whether he's on his head or his heels; but as they're of about equal value, I should imagine, for thinking purposes, it doesn't much matter. Ah, here's Neeld. He came up with me."