The less satisfying his replies, the more Mrs. Milton-Cleave’s curiosity grew.
“Now, tell me candidly,” she said at length. “Is there not some mystery about our new neighbour? Is he quite what he seems to be?”
“I fear he is not,” said Mr. Blackthorne, making the admission in a tone of reluctance, though, to tell the truth, he had been longing to pass me on for the last five minutes.
“You mean that he is fast?”
“Worse than that,” said James Blackthorne, lowering his voice as they walked down one of the shady garden paths. “He is a dangerous, unprincipled fellow, and into the bargain an avowed Nihilist. All that is involved in that word you perhaps scarcely realise.”
“Indeed I do,” she exclaimed with a shocked expression. “I have just been reading a review of that book by Stepniak. Their social and religious views are terrible; free-love, atheism, everything that could bring ruin on the human race. Is he indeed a Nihilist?”
Mr. Blackthorne’s conscience gave him a sharp prick, for he knew that he ought not to have passed me on. He tried to pacify it with the excuse that he had only promised not to tell that Miss Houghton had been his informant.
“I assure you,” he said impressively, “it is only too true. I know it on the best authority.”
And here I cannot help remarking that it has always seemed to me strange that even experienced women of the world, like Mrs. Milton-Cleave, can be so easily hoodwinked by that vague nonentity, ‘The Best Authority.’ I am inclined to think that were I a human being I should retort with an expressive motion of the finger and thumb, “Oh, you know it on the best authority, do you? Then that for your story!”
However, I thrived wonderfully on the best authority, and it would be ungrateful of me to speak evil of that powerful though imaginary being.