"Since you seem quite unable to look after her."
"Kathleen?"
"It's against Fred's express wish that I am here. Even though I've left two of his cards outside. With mine."
But these did not seem to her bewildered host very adequate aids to respectability, since the enigma was now meandering backwards to what was from his point of view its most undesirable solution—namely, that Kathleen should console Fred for Trixie's desertion to himself. He did not at all like to be closeted with Trixie against Fred's express wish. And he cursed his own innate courtesy which would not permit him to do other than make a visitor appear welcome in his house.
"Do let me get you a glass of lemonade—or some cake?"
She wagged her head in solemn refusal. "The affair is bound to lead——" interminable pause in which the plot thickened like gravy exposed to the chill air ... "to the Cream-Pashionel. They always do."
"Look here, Mrs. Worley," Temple crossed to the fireplace, and standing with his back to the grate, faced her with good-humoured determination to break through that awful barrier of mystery, "I honestly haven't the faintest idea what you are so kindly trying to tell me. I'm not clever at guessing things, you know. Won't you explain?"
"I'm breaking it to you. Gently," said Trixie, still stolidly obscure. And indeed, by the time Gareth had groped through the enmeshing glooms to the heart of the riddle, that Kathleen and Napier Kirby were engaged in a surreptitious love-affair, it scarcely came any more as a reeling shock to his senses....
"Fred knows. And I know. I should suppose poor Grace knows. And everybody except you. They have been seen motoring. Embracing. In the neighbourhood. Mr. Temple. You have been blind, indeed. You must do something. Words cannot express my sorrow. And disgust. That such a thing should start under my very roof. Fred still admires him, though I say all day: 'Fred. Don't admire him!'"
She rose to go.