"No?" he said.
"Indeed, yes. She's a sweet and innocent girl whom he's getting round somehow or other by his infernal poetry and that. He's compromising her horribly and she can't see it. I've, I've seen something of her lately and I've tried to tell her as well as I could. But she doesn't take me seriously enough. She's not really in love with Lothian—I don't see how any young and pretty girl could really be in love with a man who looks like he's beginning to look. But they write—they've been about together in the most dreadfully compromising way. One never knows how far it may go. For the sake of the nicest girl I have ever known it ought to be put a stop to."
Toftrees smiled grimly. He knew who the girl was now, and he saw how the land lay. Young Ingworth was in love and frightened to death of his erstwhile friend's influence over the girl. That was natural enough.
"Suppose any harm were to come to her," Ingworth continued with something very like a break in his voice. "She's quite alone and unprotected. She is the daughter of a man who was in the Navy, and now she has to earn her own living as an assistant librarian in Kensington. A man like Lothian who can talk, and write beautiful letters—damned scoundrel and blackguard!"
Toftrees was not much interested in his young friend's stormy love-affairs. But he was interested in the putting of a spoke into Gilbert Lothian's wheel. And he had a genuine dislike and disgust of intrigue. A faithful husband to a faithful wife whose interests were identical with his, the fact of a married man of his acquaintance running after some little typewriting girl whose people were not alive to look after her, seemed abominable. Nice girls should not be used so. He thought of dodges and furtive meetings, sly telephone calls, and anxious country expeditions with a shudder. And if he thanked God that he was above these things, it was perhaps not a pharisaical gratitude that animated him.
"Look here," he said suddenly. "You needn't go on, Ingworth. I know who it is. It's Miss Wallace, of the Podley Library. She was at the Amberleys' that night when Lothian made such a beast of himself. She writes a little, too. Very pretty and charming girl!"
Ingworth assented eagerly. "Yes!" he cried, "that's just it! She's clever. She's intrigued by Lothian. She doesn't love him, she told me so yesterday——"
He stopped, suddenly, realising what he had said.
Toftrees covered his confusion in a moment. Toftrees wanted to see this to the end.
"No, no," he said with assumed impatience. "Of course, she knows that Lothian is married, and, being a decent girl, she would never let her feelings—whatever they may be—run away with her. She's dazzled. That's what it is, and very natural, too! But it ought to be stopped. As a matter of fact, Ingworth, I saw them together at the Metropole at Brighton one night. They had motored down together. And I've heard that they've been seen about a lot in London at night. Most people know Lothian by sight, and such a lovely girl as Miss Wallace everyone looks at. From what I saw, and from what I've heard, they are very much in love with each other."