"So it appears," I replied. "But you haven't told me how you worked the scandal. You were sitting with your backs against the wall—Go on"——
"Sitting with our backs against the wall," repeated my agent complacently. "Well, we began to talk about the jealousy there was amongst the station chaps on account of Jack the Shellback being picked to take Nosey's place; and from that we got round to gossip about you stopping with Nosey the evening you left here, and wondering how you got on together, being queer in different ways. Then the conversation settled down on you; and we even quoted a remark Mrs. Beaudesart had made about you, only a couple of hours before. She had said that, though you were such a wonderful talker, you were surprisingly reticent respecting your own former life, and your family connections, and the place you came from. We commented on this remark, and laughed a bit, not at you, but at her. Clever engineering— was n't it?"
"Not unless she was in her room, with her ear against the wall."
"Trust her," replied my ambassador confidently. "She saw us sitting down as she went across the yard; and we counted on her. We knew her meanness in the matter of listening."
"Don't say 'meanness,'" I remonstrated. "I must take her part there. You can't judge even a high-minded woman by the standard of a moderately mean man, in this particular phase of character. Our deepest student of human nature makes his favourite Beatrice, on receiving a hint, run down the garden like a lapwing, to do a bit of deliberate eavesdropping; whilst her masculine counterpart, Benedick, has to hear his share of the disclosure inadvertently and reluctantly. Similarly, in Love's Labour Lost, when the mis-delivered letter is handed to Lord Boyet to read, he says:—
This letter is mistook; it importeth none here;
It is writ to Jaquenetta.
That, of course, settles the matter in his mind; but the Princess, true to her sex, says eagerly, and with a perfectly clear conscience:—
We will read it, I swear;
Break the neck of the wax, and let every one give ear.
"Don't let us judge women by our standard here, for we can't afford to be judged by their standard in some other"——
"Hear, hear; loud applause; much laughter," interrupted the delegate flippantly. "Well, we were yarning and laughing over Mrs. Beaudesart's simplicity; and it came out that Nelson and Mooney knew there was some reason why you dare n't go back to where you were known; but they had never heard the story; so I put them on their honour, and told them the whole affair."