‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Ask him to be kind enough to come here for a moment.’
With little delay, Mr. Mankelow answered the summons which called him from his soup. He wore evening dress; his thin hair was parted down the middle; his smooth-shaven and rather florid face expressed the annoyance of a hungry man at so unseasonable an interruption.
‘Do forgive me,’ began Mrs. Damerel, in a pathetic falsetto. ‘I have been so upset, I felt obliged to seek advice immediately, and no one seemed so likely to be of help to me as you—a man of the world. Would you believe that a sister of that silly little Miss. French has just been here—a downright virago—declaring that the girl has been led astray, and that I am responsible for it? Can you imagine such impertinence? She has fibbed shockingly to the people at home—told them she was constantly here with me in the evenings, when she must have been—who knows where. It will teach me to meddle again with girls of that class.’
Mankelow stood with his hands behind him, and legs apart, regarding the speaker with a comically puzzled air.
‘My dear Mrs. Damerel,’—he had a thick, military sort of voice,—‘why in the world should this interpose between us and dinner? Afterwards, we might—’
‘But I am really anxious about the silly little creature. It would be extremely disagreeable if my name got mixed up in a scandal of any kind. You remember my telling you that she didn’t belong exactly to the working-class. She has even a little property of her own; and I shouldn’t wonder if she has friends who might make a disturbance if her—her vagaries could be in any way connected with me and my circle. Something was mentioned about Brussels. She has been chattering about some one who wanted to take her to Brussels—’
The listener arched his eyebrows more and more.
‘What can it matter to you?’
‘To be sure, I have no acquaintance with any one who could do such things—’