"Oh! I suggested that perhaps it was rather your affair than his, and then he said that one of us had got to go, and we played a sort of nursery game—'twasn't me and 'twas you, don't you know—I didn't go, so he did. Am I really compromising you—aunt?"
"Of course you're not," she said laughing. "There's a perfect explanation of your coming here in our relationship, but I don't choose to produce the family pedigree on demand. In plain English, Sir Ross is jealous of you, and jealous people are capable of anything."
"So it appears," Melville said. "From the way Sir Ross waltzed down to the gate I thought the gravel must be red-hot. Only a very angry man could prance as he did. By the way, he asked me how I was related to you."
"Did you tell him?" she asked a little anxiously.
"Not I," said Melville. "I saw he didn't know, and inferred you hadn't told him, so I explained that we were related by marriage, and eased him off a point or two."
"That was quite right," Mrs. Sinclair said approvingly. "You should never gratify idle curiosity."
Melville assented, but decided mentally that his own desire for information was different from the idle curiosity of Sir Ross Buchanan, and resolved that it should be satisfied.
"It was unfortunate," Mrs. Sinclair went on, "that Lucille should have shown you both into the same room, but it must have been very funny to see you glaring at each other."
Melville expostulated.
"I didn't glare. I purred—positively purred, but it was no good. Sir Ross meant to lose his temper and he lost it. He doesn't believe in our relationship a little bit. He said he knew the late Mr. Sinclair intimately, and never heard of any relations of his named Ashley."