“Twenty minutes past,” he remarked. “To be exact, twenty-two minutes past.”
His hostess turned and regarded him contemplatively.
“How painfully precise!” she remarked. “Somehow, it doesn’t sound convincing, though. Your watch is probably like your morals.”
“What a flattering simile!” he murmured.
“Flattering?”
“It presupposes, at any rate, their existence,” he explained. “It is years since I was reminded of them.”
Wilhelmina seated herself before an open card-table.
“No doubt,” she answered. “You see I knew you when you were a boy. Seriously,” she continued, “I have been engaged with my agent for the last half-hour—a most interesting person, I can assure you. There was an agreement with one Philip Crooks concerning a farm, which he felt compelled to read to me—every word of it! Come along and cut, all of you!”
The fourth person, slim, fair-haired, the typical army officer and country house habitué, came over to the table, followed by the lantern-jawed man. Lady Peggy also turned up a card.