"By the way," I cut in, "don't you think it would all make magnificent material for a novel, Uvo?"
"If you could find anybody to publish it!" he answered, laughing.
"You wouldn't mind if he was put into a book—and the place as well?"
"I wouldn't, if nobody else didn't! Why? Who's thinking of doing us the honour?"
Dear Miss Julia coughed and laughed with delicious coyness. My liberty had been condoned.
"Was it you, Miss Brabazon?" cried Uvo, straightening his face with the nerve that never failed him at a climax.
"Well, it was and it wasn't," she replied, exceeding slyly. "I did think I should like to write a little story about Witching Hill House, and put in rather a bad character; at least he would begin by being rather undesirable, perhaps. But I was forgetting that the place had been in your family, Mr. Delavoye. I certainly never knew, until Mr. Gillon told me, that one of the Lords Mulcaster had been—er—perhaps—no better than he ought to have been."
"To put it mildly," said Delavoye, with smiling face and shrieking eyes. "You may paint the bad old hat as black as mine, Miss Brabazon, and still turn him out a saint compared with the villain of the case I've been reading up to-day. So you really needn't worry about anybody's susceptibilities. Lay on the local colour inches deep! You won't make the place as red as the old gentleman painted it in blood and wine!"
"Really, Mr. Delavoye!" cried Miss Julia, jocosely shocked. "You mustn't forget that my story would only appear in our Parish Magazine—unless the R.T.S. took it afterwards."
"My rude forefather in a Religious Tract!"