“I assure you that at present there is no reason for such talk,” he said earnestly.
Now Mrs. Altham, with her wide interest in all that concerned anybody else, might be expected to feel the intensest curiosity on such a topic, but somehow she felt very little, since she knew that behind the talk there was really very little topic, and the gallant misgivings of poor, ugly Harry seemed to her destitute of any real thrill. On the other hand, she wanted very much to know where Major Ames was, and being endowed with the persistence of the household cat, which you may turn out of a particular arm-chair a hundred times, without producing the slightest discouragement in its mind, she reverted to her own subject again.
“I am sure there is no reason for such talk, Mr. Harry,” she said, with strangely unwelcome conviction, “and I will be sure to contradict it if ever I hear it. I am so glad to hear Major Ames is not ill. I was afraid that his absence from lunch to-day might mean that he was.”
Now Harry, as a matter of fact, had no idea where his father was, since the telephone message had been received by Mrs. Ames.
“Father is quite well,” he said. “He was picking sweet-peas half the morning. He picked a great bunch.”
Mrs. Altham looked round: the table was decorated with the roses of the dinner-party of the evening before.
“Then where are the sweet-peas?” she asked.
But Harry was not in the least interested in the question.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps they are in the next room. I showed Mrs. Evans last night how the La France roses looked blue when dusk fell. She had never noticed it, though they turn as blue as her eyes.”
“How curious!” said Mrs. Altham. “But I didn’t see the sweet-peas in the next room. Surely if there had been a quantity of them I should have noticed them. Or perhaps they are in the drawing-room.”