Lennox stared. Angry already, angry ever since the rupture, angry with that intensity of anger which only those who love—or who think they do—and who are thwarted in it ever know, and all the angrier because he had no one and could have no one to vent it on, until he got to the front and got at the Huns, at that last fillip from Cassy he saw some one on whom he could vent it, and yet to whom none the less he felt strangely grateful. For, whatever Paliser had done or omitted, at any rate, he had completely clarified the situation.
"I must run," said Cassy. "But you can tell Miss Austen, can't you?"
Lennox, controlling himself, motioned. "Would you mind repeating this to Jones?"
Cassy's eyebrows arched themselves. "It was hard enough to tell you. Were it not for your engagement, I wouldn't have said anything. When dreadful things happen to a girl, people always think that she must be dreadful herself. Isn't that nice of them? I——"
"See here," Lennox interrupted, "you can't leave it like this. Something has got to be done. I can give Paliser a hiding and I will. But that isn't enough. I don't know whether a criminal action will lie, but I do know that you can get damages and heavy ones."
Cassy's lovely eyes searched the room. "Who was that speaking? It wasn't you, was it?"
Lennox, recognising the rebuke, acknowledged it. "Forgive me. I forgot whom I was addressing. Jones will be less stupid. Let us have him in."
But when Jones, immediately requisitioned, appeared, Cassy again putting down her bundle, protested. "Mr. Lennox regards me as an Ariadne and expects me to act like a young lady in a department-store. Either rôle is too up-stage."
Jones, taken with her mobile mouth, her lovely eyes, the oval of her handsome face, said lightly: "It seems to me that you might assume any part."
Lennox struck out. "Paliser hocuspocused her with a fake marriage. He——"