“More in your line—eh?”
Deb shook her head. And on pretext of needing to do her hair afresh for supper, she followed Antonia into the house. She required to snatch some general information from Antonia about this long, thin beaky-nosed Cliffe Kennedy, with the sunny, forget-me-not blue eyes, and outrageously nimble tongue, before she presented him with the confidences for which he was angling. As she emerged from the garden passage into the hall, she heard Antonia speaking in that peculiarly distinct voice one reserves for the telephone: “No, I want Gillian—Oh, isn’t she?—Well, listen, Winny—Say I simply must go out to-night. I muddled the days—I expect her to-morrow night instead....”
Deb walked slowly through the hall and up the stairs. She was puzzled....
Antonia had not seen her. A moment later she came into the bedroom.
“Oh, was Cliffe too much for you?”
“You said you would tell me about him.”
“Certainly,” said Antonia obligingly, sitting on the edge of the bed and clasping her hands round her knees. “He’s a rich subject—Cliffe Kennedy, aged twenty-nine—only son of a perfectly sweet old mother. He’s a completely harmless-uncle type, from the sex point of view; and also the most dangerous and mischievous person that ever walked this earth, because he attracts all confidences and secrets, and then betrays them lavishly as the freakish impulse takes him.”
“But forewarned——”
“Is not forearmed—with Cliffe. He has a magnetic and fatal lure, that draws and draws you.... You seek comfort each time by an instinctive self-assurance that just this once and only this once Cliffe is to be trusted; and when he is relating one of his best impromptus, your instinct equally assures you that just this once and only this once Cliffe is telling the truth. Yes, you needn’t flush quite so hotly, Deb; which one was it you believed? The episode which cured him of lying? Why, he lies by mechanism. He keeps a sort of stock-pot, into which he throws the bare bones of every dramatic incident which takes his fancy, and fishes it up again meated with personal application. He’s everybody’s best friend and everybody’s worst enemy in succession, and gyrates from one extreme to the other so quickly that you may be unburdening your inmost heart to him under an entirely false impression that you are still on the friendly category. There’s the gong, Deb. Any more questions, before the Court rises?”