"Confess, then," she went on, "confess, Mr. Walmsley, that in all your well-ordered life you have never heard such an admission made by two apparently respectable people before."
"How do you know," I asked, "that my life has been well-ordered?"
"Look at yourself in the glass," she begged.
Scarcely knowing what I did, I turned round in my seat and obeyed her. There is, perhaps, a certain preciseness about my appearance as well as my attire. I am tall enough—well over six feet—but my complexion still retains traces of my years in Africa and of my fondness for outdoor sports. My hair is straight and I have never grown beard or mustache. I felt, somehow, that I represented the things which in an Englishman are a little derided by young ladies on the other side of the water.
"I can't help my appearance," I said, a little crossly. "I can assure you that I am not a prig."
"Our young friend," Mr. Parker intervened, "has certainly earned his immunity from any such title. To tell you the truth, Eve, he has already been my accomplice this evening in a certain little matter. But for his help, who knows that I might not have found myself up against it? Between us we have even had a little fun out of Cullen."
Her expression changed. She seemed, for some reason, none too well pleased.
"What have you been doing?" she asked me.
"I, personally, have been doing very little indeed," I told her. "Your father entered the restaurant in a hurry about an hour ago and found it convenient to seat himself at my table and help himself to my dinner. He intrusted me, also, with a packet, which I subsequently returned to him."
"It is now," Mr. Parker declared, replying to his daughter's anxious glance, "in perfectly safe hands."