"Please don't be ridiculous. Besides," Lady Brayle added suddenly, "your behaviour in that hansom was so utterly disgusting that…"
H.M.'was stung. "Burn it, Sophie, I only put my hand—"
"It will not be necessary to go into details."
"But you didn't tell your old man so he'd come whistlin' after me with a horse-whip, which you said you were goin' to. What I mean: you were an A-l sport in those days. Now you've turned into—" H.M. swung round. "Sophie, will you believe me if I tell you that honest-to-God I'm trying to help you? And your family?"
Lady Brayle hiccoughed with mirth. "When, yesterday, you…’
"But I didn't know I was buying the clock, did I?"
"You must excuse me," the other said crisply. "I was summoned here by an urgent phone-call from Cicely Fleet I do not know why. I—"
"Do you want the clock back?"
What effect this conversation was having on Ruth, Stannard, and Ricky, who were gathered with him beside the round table with the map, Martin could not tell. Ricky, he quite accurately guessed, had been told nothing about any attempt to buy a clock; and the water grew deeper. But Stannard, as a detached and sardonic observer of human life, sat down in the tapestry chair and, with pleasure, placed his fingertips together.
"Your behaviour yesterday," announced Lady Brayle, "was so despicable! So puerile! So childish—"