“It would have been jolly to have talked some more,” he said.
“I hope we shall.”
“Well!” said Wilkins, with a sudden hardness in his eyes and she was swept away from him.
She found no chance of talking to him upstairs, Sir Isaac came for her early; but she went in hope of another meeting.
It did not come. For a time that expectation gave dinners and luncheon parties a quite appreciable attraction. Then she told Agatha Alimony. “I’ve never met him but that once,” she said.
“One doesn’t meet him now,” said Agatha, deeply.
“But why?”
Deep significance came into Miss Alimony’s eyes. “My dear,” she whispered, and glanced about them. “Don’t you know?”
Lady Harman was a radiant innocence.
And then Miss Alimony began in impressive undertones, with awful omissions like pits of darkness and with such richly embroidered details as serious spinsters enjoy, adding, indeed, two quite new things that came to her mind as the tale unfolded, and, naming no names and giving no chances of verification or reply, handed on the fearful and at that time extremely popular story of the awful wickedness of Wilkins the author.