"She came over for the ceremony. Harold was her favourite brother, and when she heard of Tita's birth she came to London as fast as she could," cried Weevil, not realising what a wild thing he was saying.
"To London!" murmured Mr. Bellamie. "The child was baptised at St. Michael's, Cornhill?" he added swiftly.
"No, in Hendon church."
"I thought you said she was born in Lausanne at the Hotel Gibbon?"
"So she was," gasped Weevil, perspiring and distraught. "I mean she was buried in Hendon churchyard."
"What! the little girl—Boodles!" said Mr. Bellamie, laughing gently.
"No, my wife. We were married there." Weevil did not know what he was saying. The pictures and ornaments, which had been his undoing, were dancing about before his eyes.
"You are getting confused," said the gentle visitor. "I understood you to say you were married at St. George's, Hanover Square."
"Ah, but I used to go to Hendon," said Weevil eagerly, nodding, and grinning, and speaking the truth at last. "I used to walk out there on Sundays and holidays, and have bread and cheese in a tea-garden at Edgware, and then go on by Mill Hill and Arkley and round to Barnet, and back across Hampstead Heath to my lodgings in Kentish Town. I was very fond of that walk, but I couldn't do it now, sir. It would be much too far for an old man like me."
Weevil was happy again. He thought he had succeeded in changing the subject, and getting away from the fictitious family of Lascelles. Mr. Bellamie was satisfied too. Canon Lascelles was a fiction with him also. The pictures and furniture had given truthful evidence. Weevil was a fraud, but such a well-meaning pitiable old humbug that the visitor could not feel angry. They had fenced at each other with fictions, and in such delicate play Weevil had not much chance; and his latest and only truthful admission had done for him entirely. Gentlemen of means do not walk up the Edgware Road on Sundays and holidays, and partake of bread and cheese in suburban tea-gardens, and then return to lodgings in Kentish Town.