“He thought you were Bill Patch,” said Sallie instantly, and I had a sudden feeling that she was right.
“Did she introduce you?”
“She said, ‘Mr. Ambrey—my husband, Mr. Harter.’ He didn’t shake hands. And then I had to go.”
“Does Bill know?”
“Not unless she’s conveyed it to him by telepathy. She said when I was going, ‘Please make my excuses and say I can’t come to the rehearsal, but I’ll turn up to-morrow night all right.’ I bet she will!”
“I hope the husband will come, too,” said Sallie, in what I can only call a bloodthirsty way.
“Well, there they are, the three of them. I suppose,” Martyn said, “that Patch will rush off, as usual, and go down to Queen Street this evening and there he’ll find Mr. Harter.”
“He won’t be as much surprised as you might suppose. Didn’t someone say that Bill and Mrs. Harter had written to him, and asked him to come and see what he thought about it all—something of that sort?”
“You’re flippant, Sallie. Mark my words, something or other is going to get smashed.”
I listened to these two young people. They certainly seemed to me graceless in their hard, detached appraisement of the affair, but at least their interest was on a higher level than that of Lady Annabel’s low-voiced censoriousness or the frank scandal-mongering of the Kendals.