"One might get a good one about how to make a governess explode, the answer being 'Burn it!' By Jove, I must think that out."
Before I could recover from my amazement at this extraordinary attitude, he had suddenly resumed his shrewd quizzical look.
"Are you an old friend of Mr Burnett?" he inquired.
"Oh, not very," I said carelessly.
"Then perhaps you'll not be offended by my saying that he seems a rum kind of bird," he said confidentially.
"In what way?"
"Well, coming up here just for a Sunday to preach a sermon, and then not preaching it, but staying on as if he'd taken a lease of the manse—him and his twelve-twenty-fourths of a sister!"
"But," I stammered, before I could think what I was saying, "I thought he did preach last Sunday!"
"Not him! Oh, people are talking a lot about it."
This revelation left me absolutely speechless. Tiel had told me distinctly and deliberately that he had gone through the farce of preaching last Sunday—and now I learned that this was a lie. What was worse, he had assured me that he was causing no comment, and I now was told that people were "talking." Coming straight on top of my discovery of his reckless conduct of Eileen's affair, what was I to think of him?