"He doesn't sound the best companion in the world for your little typist friend," I remarked.
Mr. Bundercombe glanced across the room and at that moment the girl noticed him. She bowed and waved her hand. Mr. Bundercombe responded gallantly.
"I fancy," he murmured, "that she can take care of herself. Come, I really feel that I am in an interesting atmosphere once more."
Mr. Bundercombe's deportment was certainly more cheerful. For the last week or two he had been depressed. He had paid visits with Eve and myself, and devoted a reasonable amount of time to his wife. The demands on his complete respectability, however, had been irksome. He was too obviously finding no savor in life.
I really was not altogether sorry at first to notice the improvement in his spirits, though my sentiments changed when, a little later in the evening, the girl opposite left her place and came over to us. She greeted Mr. Bundercombe with the most brilliant of smiles and he held her hand quite as long as was necessary. He presented me and I learned that her name was Miss Blanche Spencer.
"I must not stay long," she said, laughing. "The gentleman I am with is a sort of cousin of mine and we don't get on very well; but I mustn't be rude."
Mr. Bundercombe and she seemed to have a good deal to say to each other and presently I noticed that their heads were drawing closer together. The girl dropped her voice. She was proposing something to which Mr. Bundercombe was listening with keen interest. I heard him sigh.
"If it weren't for certain changes," he explained regretfully, "I guess I wouldn't hesitate a moment. But—"
I heard a whispered reference to myself as his daughter's fiancé and an allusion to the continued presence of his wife in London. She nodded sympathetically.
"Now if there were any other way," Mr. Bundercombe concluded, "in which I could still further show my gratitude to you personally for a certain little matter, why I'm all for hearing about it. I consider the balance is still on my side."