"Nothing; we don't like each other, that's all. If he asks you, when you rejoin him, how much I have told you—he is sure to do that—say to him from me that the Lomaxes carry their own burdens and never gossip about other people's."
Dereham laughed easily.
"By Jove, it sounds intense; but you always had a twist for intensity, Lomax, so I'm prepared for it.—Do you know, by the way, that Sybil Ogilvie is staying at Laverack's place?" he added, with a swift glance of inquiry.
Griff caught the glance full, but seemed untroubled. Then he looked down at his corduroys, and tightened his leather belt with a pleased chuckle.
"I hope we may meet; she would like me in this sort of rig. There's a good deal of stable-manure on my boots, too, which would round off the idyll. Bah! Dereham, you wasted me a lot of my time, you little people in London."
Dereham lit a cigar before responding, and perched himself on a heathery knoll.
"I always did like you, Lomax," he drawled at last. "You're such an engaging original, and this last piece of foolery suits you better than any you've tried yet. Still that air of the Almighty about you, only a little more so. Where's the poor devil of a woman?"
Griff's face took an ugly shade.
"Whom do you mean?"
"Why, the cattle-dealer's wife—quarryman's—what was it? It would have done your vanity good—or your love, was it? only a matter of terms—to see the way Mrs. Ogilvie sickened when the affair became common gossip in our set."