"Yes, yes, Neeld, there's the lady too."
"Well, Edge, if you're satisfied, I can't stand out. For a week then—silence."
"Absolute!" said Harry. "Without a look or a word?"
"You have my promise," said Wilmot Edge.
"And mine. But—but I shall feel very awkward," sighed poor Mr Neeld. He might have added that he did feel a sudden and poignant pang of disappointment. Lived there the man who would not have liked to carry that bit of news in his portmanteau when he went out of town? At least that man was not Mr Jenkinson Neeld.
"I'll choose my time, and I won't keep you long," said Harry.
With that they left him. But they had a word together before Edge caught his 'bus in Piccadilly.
"Cool young chap!" said he. "Took it quietly enough."
"Yes, considering the enormous difference it makes," agreed Neeld. His use of that particular phrase was perhaps an unconscious reminiscence of the words in the Journal, the words that Addie used when she burst into Madame de Kries's room at Heidelberg.
Edge chuckled a little. "Not much put out about the girl either, eh?"