"No—don't break off like that! Let me say a word more. I know your answer to Mr. Langhope—that you and Justine are no longer together. But I thought of you as a man to sink your personal relations at such a moment as this."
"To sink them?" he repeated vaguely: and she went on: "After all, what difference does it make?"
"What difference?" He stared in unmitigated wonder, and then answered, with a touch of irony: "It might at least make the difference of my being unwilling to ask a favour of her."
Mrs. Ansell, at this, raised her eyes and let them rest full on his. "Because she has done you so great a one already?"
He stared again, sinking back automatically into his chair. "I don't understand you."
"No." She smiled a little, as if to give herself time. "But I mean that you shall. If I were a man I suppose I couldn't, because a man's code of honour is such a clumsy cast-iron thing. But a woman's, luckily, can be cut over—if she's clever—to fit any new occasion; and in this case I should be willing to reduce mine to tatters if necessary."
Amherst's look of bewilderment deepened. "What is it that I don't understand?" he asked at length, in a low voice.
"Well—first of all, why Mr. Langhope had the right to ask you to send for your wife."
"The right?"
"You don't recognize such a right on his part?"