"What is there to answer, madam?" he mildly asked. "It's all the young gentleman's foolishness, some foolishness which I can't understand."
"But the thing can't stand like this," protested the ponderous Van Tuyl.
There must have been something reassuring to them both in the methodic calmness with which this calumniated factor in their domestic Eden moved about once more performing his petty domestic duties.
"Then you deny everything he says?" insisted the woman.
The servant stopped and looked up in mild reproof.
"Of course, madam," he replied, as he slowly removed the liqueur glasses. I saw my hostess look after him with one of her long and abstracted glances. She was still peering into his face as he stepped back to the table. She was, indeed, still gazing at him when the muffled shrill of an electric bell announced there was a caller at the street door.
"Wilkins," she said, almost ruminatively, "I want you to answer the door—the street door."
"Yes, madam," he answered, without hesitation.
The three of us sat in silence, as the slow and methodic steps crossed the room, stepped out into the hall, and advanced to what at least one of us knew to be his doom. It was Van Tuyl himself who spoke up out of the silence.
"What's up?" he asked. "What's he gone for?"