"I suppose I am an idiot," she acknowledged, "but that man terrifies me."
"In what way?"
"He is my husband's associate in business." Josephine said, "and apparently desires to take advantage of that fact. My husband is not a reliable person where money is concerned. He seems to have been behaving rather badly."
"I am very sorry," Wingate murmured.
She looked at him curiously.
"Has anything happened?" she asked. "You seem distressed."
Wingate shook his head. The shock of having met his enemy under such circumstances was beginning to pass.
"Forgive me," he begged. "The fact of it is, the last person I expected to find here was Peter Phipps. I forgot that your husband was connected with his company."
"You two are not friends?" she suggested.
"We are bitter enemies," Wingate confessed, "and shall be till one of us goes down. We are a very terrible example of the evils of this age of restraint. In more primitive days we should have gone for one another's throats. One would have lived and the other died. It would have been, better."