The fury in Fuller's voice was hardly suppressed.
"I believe that I am not censorious," said Lady Rossiter. "It is utterly foreign to my nature, and I would sooner blind myself to evil than look out for it—yet there are things which go against one's every instinct. This is a very little community and has always been a very peaceful and happy one. It hurts me very much, somehow, that there should be talk of the kind that I know has been going on lately."
"Mischief-making——" muttered Fuller fiercely and without completing his sentence.
"Officiousness is the curse of the age!" exclaimed Sir Julian, neither for the first nor the second time. "Why can't people mind their own business? What has it to do with them?" As he spoke, some part of his mind commented upon the futility of these disjointed exclamations, and the irrationality of the desire to gain time that had caused him to utter them.
The three men gazed at Lady Rossiter.
"Oh, how I hate saying it!" she cried in an impulsive manner. "It isn't that I think there's any harm in it all—indeed, I don't. But I myself have seen little things—tiny, infinitesimal incidents, if you like—that somehow seem to carry significance by repetition. That sort of thing doesn't do."
She looked at her listeners for an instant, and made inevitable selection amongst them.
She turned to the Alderman appealingly.
"I'm only a woman, but I know that sort of thing doesn't do in business offices. Isn't it true?"
"Quite true, Lady Rossiter," said the Alderman instantly. "It's an undesirable sort of element altogether. And once people start talking—especially a lot of girls, if you'll excuse my saying so—it's hopeless. It ought to be got rid of."