Toby sat as stiff as a poker in the armchair.
"I can't quite reconcile your statement that you were going to be all alone with the fact that you knew Kit was coming to-morrow," he said. "Not off-hand, at least."
Ted Comber began to be aware that the position was a sultry one. Kit had distinctly told him not to tell any of the people at the cottage that she was coming, and he had said that this was the wrong sort of precaution to take. They would be sure to know, and a failure in secrecy is a ghastly failure, and so difficult to explain afterwards, for people always think that if you keep a thing secret there is something to be kept secret. No doubt she had come round to his way of thinking, and had told them herself, forgetting the prohibition she had laid on him. Altogether it was an annoying business. However, this scene with the barbarous brother-in-law had to be gone through with at once. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Kit told me not to mention it," he said. "We were going to have a rustic little time in all our worst clothes and no maid. That is all."
"You have lied to me—that is all," said Toby, with incredible rudeness.
"That is not the way for one man to speak to another, Toby," said Lord Comber, feeling suddenly cold and damp. "I followed Kit's directions."
"Of course, it is the fashion to say that it is the woman's fault," observed Toby fiendishly.
Lord Comber was quite at a loss how to deal with such outrageous behaviour. People did not do such things.
"Did you come here in order to quarrel with me?" he asked.