It could not be Kuhlmann, so she tried Boyton.
“Yes,” said Robin. “He gave me a bad taste in the mouth. He was making odious insinuations about the Gurtner-Gardners, implying German sympathies. If you go and dine with people you shouldn’t do that. Because if you believe what you say, you’ve got no business to be there.”
“I quite agree. I knew Mr. Boyton had been saying things of the sort, and since then I haven’t seen him. What did you do after dinner?”
“We danced. There was a band and a great supper, as if it had been a regular ball. But only about a dozen people came.”
“Aline is not a very clever woman,” remarked his mother. “I warned her not to give a ball.”
Robin hesitated a moment.
“Have you had any sort of row with her?” he asked.
“She was a good deal vexed with me when I saw her last, more than a couple of months ago,” she said.
She longed to ask if Aline had said anything unfriendly about her, but that was just the sort of thing she never did ask. Robin would tell her if he thought fit.
“I gathered as much,” he said. “I’m sorry I went, but what was I to do? As I say, she asked me heaps of times, and I thought she was a friend of yours.”