"Yes. You might go and get one of my clean painting-blouses from the box, and give it to Lord Winborough. He must put it on, or he will get smothered with this messy stuff."
Pallister obeyed. Shaking out the laundress's folds, he laid the clean garment insinuatingly over a chair. Then noticing that Winborough was standing surveying the charcoal outline of Maudie, he whistled softly to himself, made a grimace, and skipped rapidly back to the safety of the plaster-room. For the nonce Geoff and his cousin were left alone.
Oft-times who can tell precisely how it was, or why or whence a quarrel sprang to life? Geoff was resolved not to mention Evarne; Winborough was practically bound by honour to the same course. Yet certain it is that this one subject—religiously tabooed, yet all the time uppermost in both minds—somehow came to the front. Then a word taken amiss, a tone of the voice, a glance of the eye, and hot anger sapped the resolutions of cooler moments. In the main, both cousins held firm to their original determinations. Geoff made no mention of the imminence of his marriage; Winborough guarded his fatal secret loyally. But despite this, their voices, raised loud in wrath, penetrated to the ears of Jack and Pallister in the plaster-room.
"Good gracious, what's up?" queried Pallister, with a startled expression. "Do you suppose Lord Winborough has found out that Maudie has been here?"
"Of course not. Can't you guess? I'll bet anything you like they're quarrelling over Geoff's engagement."
"They jolly well are quarrelling, aren't they?"
"I should just think so. I wonder what we had better do."
"Is everything ready? How very awkward. We can hardly intrude in the middle of a family debate, can we?"
They remained in doubt, listening with growing concern to the storm that was raging in the next room. In a few minutes the question of the course they were to take was settled for them. The door of the studio opening on to the little corridor was flung wide, and Winborough's voice was heard calling in curt, imperative tones—
"Mr. Hardy! Mr. Hardy!"