“I don’t,” said Fullerton, equally so.
“Mind you, he’s a chap who wants knowing a bit,” went on the Native Commissioner. “Then he’s all right.”
“Is he coming to the race meeting, Mr Driffield?” said Clare.
“Yes. He didn’t intend to, though, until I gave him your message, Miss Vidal. We pointed out to him that he couldn’t stop away after that.”
“Message! But I sent him no message.”
“Oh, Miss Vidal! Come now—think again.”
“Really, Mr Driffield, I ought to be very angry with you for twisting my words like that,” laughed Clare. “But—you mean well, so let it pass. You are forgiven.”
“Talking of Lamont,” struck in Fullerton, who had a wearisome way of harking back to a subject long after everybody else had done with it, “there’s a yarn going about that he had to leave his own neighbourhood in England for showing the white feather. And it looks like it, remembering what a close Johnny he is about himself.”
Driffield looked up quickly.
“I believe I know who put that yarn about,” he said. “Wasn’t it Ancram—that new man who’s putting up at Foster’s?”