promised price on occasions by wearing them himself. He determined to get behind her diplomatic hints with frankness.
"I don't want you to think, Mrs. Lockwood, that because I have to refuse your first request I'm going back on our contract. There'll be plenty of other opportunities."
He caught her sigh of relief across the line. When she spoke again it was with a new brightness and reasonableness. "I'm glad you said that. So you really are going to help me? I was a wee bit afraid that you'd gone back on your bargain by the way you ran away."
It was his first experience of the advantage a woman gains when she attacks a man from the other end of a telephone. He had trouble in making his voice sound patient. He replied with conscious hypocrisy, "I'm sorry I created the impression of running away."
"You did." Her answer came back promptly. "You created the same impression on us both. I had to do a lot of explaining to Di."
"And I was trying to save you embarrassment," he excused himself.
"Eh! What's that?"
To his immense surprise a third voice—a man's—jumped in on the conversation. "Are you there? Is this Lord Taborley?"
Tabs was just getting ready to confess that he was there and that he was Lord Taborley, when Maisie took matters out of his hands by informing
the intruder that the line was occupied and that he was interrupting a conversation.