"Early this year. I consulted him on a matter of business. I have no private acquaintance with him." Dick was looking straight at Saltash with a certain hardness of contempt in his face. "You evidently are on terms of intimacy with him."
"Oh, quite!" said Saltash readily. "He knows me—almost as well as you do. And I know him—even better. I was saying to Juliette just now that I believe he shares the general impression that I have got Lady Jo Farringmore somewhere up my sleeve. She did the rabbit trick, you know, a week or two before the wedding, and because I was to have been the best man I somehow got the blame. Wonder if he'd have blamed you if you'd been there!"
Dick stiffened. "I think not," he said.
"Not disreputable enough?" laughed Saltash.
"Not nearly," said Juliet, coming out of her silence. "Dick has rather strong opinions on this subject, Charles, so please don't be flippant about it! Will you give me another match?"
He held one for her, his eyebrows cocked at a comical angle, open derision in the odd eyes beneath them. Then, her cigarette kindled, he sprang up in his abrupt fashion.
"I'm going. Thanks for putting up with me for so long. I had to come and see you, Juliette. You are one of the very few capable of appreciating me at my full value."
"I hope you will come again," she said.
He bowed low over her hand. "If I can ever serve you in any way," he said, "I hope you will give me the privilege. Farewell, most estimable Romeo! You may yet live to greet me as a friend."
He was gone with the words with the suddenness of a monkey swinging off a bough, leaving behind him a silence so marked that the fall of an unripe apple from the tree immediately above them caused Columbus to start and jump from his perch to investigate.