Mr Ringwood considered this carefully. “Don’t see any harm in it,” he pronounced at last. “Quite the thing.”
“Well, I won’t have it!” said his lordship belligerently.
“My dear Sherry, let me call for another glass!” smiled Revesby.
His lordship ignored this. “He comes here, don’t say a word, hardly blows a cloud, and then what does he do? Without so much as a by your leave, too!”
“Don’t see that,” objected Mr Ringwood, shaking his head. “Told you what he was going to do, didn’t he? If you didn’t like it, ought to have told him so. Too late now. Call for another glass!”
“I don’t want another glass, and I won’t have George taking my wife off under my very nose!”
“Sherry, Sherry!” Sir Montagu remonstrated, laying a hand on the Viscount’s arm.
It was shaken off. “Don’t keep saying Sherry at me!” said his lordship irritably. “If she wanted to go to the damned Assembly, why the devil did she say she didn’t? Tell me that!”
“I am sure she did not wish to go, and she will send Wrotham about his business,” Revesby said soothingly.
Mr Ringwood, rendered percipient by a judicious quantity of gin, said wisely: “Wouldn’t say she wished to go if you didn’t, Sherry. Noticed it often. Always does what you wish. Mistake, if you ask me.” He recruited himself with another pull at his glass. “Selfish!” he produced.