Mrs. Wheeler-Cartwright was defeated, but she retired in good order. “Good-morning, then, gentlemen. I had intended to ask Ethel to come and stay with me for a few days—a young girl alone—people will talk you know.”
“Whisper indecently, is what you mean,” I said, my manners succumbing to my anger, “but Ethel has a married cousin coming to stay with her to-day, so that’s a little pleasure they’ll have to do without.”
I thought she was going to burst. Ralph escorted her to the door into Dalehouse Lane. Ethel came through the drawing-room door and joined us. “Heroes!” she laughed. “If she’d caught me alone I should have had about the chance of a sickly sardine doing battle with a whale. She’d have packed up my things and carried me off to purer spheres. And now she is going the rounds of Merchester? the old ghoul!”
Kenneth, I noticed, had nothing to say to Ethel. She kept her face turned from him and ignored him completely. I felt intensely sorry for them both. A broken engagement—a building bird’s nest wantonly destroyed—in all conscience an unhappy enough event! But in their case, what added distresses! And they were deprived of the solace of work and other grief-killing outside interests.
Margaret appeared with her work-bag and retired with the two boys to the proposed Badminton court. Ethel and I took refuge from the sun under the kindly cedar, she with the Times on her lap, I pretending to write.
“Busy, Francis?” she inquired presently, and I knew she was going to ask me the question I wished to avoid.
“No, only killing time,” I answered grudgingly.
But she did not take the hint. She threw down the paper and sat forward so that I could not see her face, her hands clasped round her knees. “Francis, what do you think of it all really? Honestly, you don’t, you can’t, believe The Tundish capable of such a thing?”
“I can’t answer you. It’s no and yes at once,” I replied reluctantly.
Her dark head bent lower. “You against him too,” she whispered.