He raised his eyebrows.
“Go on,” he said; “say anything you want to—only, if you please, don’t speak disrespectfully of Maud.”
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you at all,” Miss Brown continued, rising to her feet, “that this Maud, or whatever you want to call her, may be playing a low-down game of her husband’s? He hates you, and he has vague suspicions. Can’t you see that he is probably making use of your infatuation for his common, middle-class little wife, to try and get you to give yourself away? Can’t you see it, Peter? You are not going to tell me that you are so blind as all that!”
“I must admit,” he answered with a sigh, “that, although I think you go altogether too far, some suspicion of the sort has interfered with my perfect enjoyment of the morning.”
Miss Brown drew a little breath of relief. After all, then, his folly was not so consummate as it had seemed!
“What are you going to do about it, then?” she asked.
Peter Ruff coughed—he seemed in an unusually amenable frame of mind, and submitted to cross-examination without murmur.
“The subject of Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald,” he remarked, “seemed, somehow or other, to drop into the background during our luncheon. I propose, therefore, to continue to offer to Mrs. John Dory my most respectful admiration. If she accepts my friendship, and is satisfied with it, so much the better. I must admit that it would give me a great deal of pleasure to be her occasional companion—at such times when her husband happens to be in Glasgow!”
“And supposing,” Miss Brown asked, “that this is not all she wants—supposing, for instance, that she persists in her desire for information concerning Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald?”
“Then,” Peter Ruff admitted, “I’m afraid that I must conclude that her unchivalrous clod of a husband has indeed stooped to make a fool of her.”