Harry became a parody of himself, though that might seem to be a feat of insuperable difficulty.
“I supposed it would get about,” he said. “That is the worst of a little place like this. Whatever you do is instantly known.”
The slightly viscous remains of the strawberry ice were being handed, and Mr. Pettit was talking to Mrs. Ames and his sister from a pitiably Christian standpoint.
“What did you hear?” asked Harry, in a low voice.
“Merely that she and you went out into the garden after dinner, and that you picked roses for her——”
Harry pushed back his lank hair with his bony hand.
“You have heard all,” he said. “There was nothing more than that. I did not see her home. Her carriage did not come: there was some mistake about it, I suppose. But it was my father who saw her home, not I.”
He laid down the spoon with which he had been consuming the viscous fluid.
“If you hear that I saw her home, Mrs. Altham,” he said, “tell them it is not true. From what you have already told me, I gather there is talk going on. There is no reason for such talk.”
He paused a moment, and then a line or two of the intensely Swinburnian effusion which he had written last night fermented in his head, making him infinitely more preposterous.