"To him."
"But you aren't a bit fair, you know, to keep on making me like you when you know very well you haven't been playing the game."
"Madame wrongs me: one can play only such cards as chance deals to one's hand."
"O dear!" Folly sighed. "I'm afraid I'm too impressionable, or I'd never trust you at all, with appearances so black for you."
"Innocence," he modestly opined, "is so shining a garment, black appearances can only lend it an enhancing background." She wavered between a smile and a frown. "But you have trusted me so far"—judging the moment ripe, Lanyard passed from trifling to earnest entreaty—"surely you can afford to trust me still farther. I want you out of the way when Soames shows Morphew in—let him say you will be down directly, nothing more—I want Morphew to meet me alone and without any warning. On the other hand, I wish you to hear every word that passes; so all that seems mysterious now will be made clear. While Morphew is busy trying to dissemble his joy at meeting me so unexpectedly, you will be able to come downstairs without making too much noise—"
"You aren't suggesting that I eavesdrop—!"
"Why not? I did as much for you an hour ago—and very much to your advantage, you'll agree. Take my word for it, in this instance you will have even more excuse . . ."
"Heaven knows how you always manage to get round me, but you do." Folly went to the door, but there paused, looking back over her shoulder with provocative eyes, pretty to death as she stood with head perked pertly, her dainty body less hidden than set off by its frothy déshabillé. "And it's well for me, I'm afraid," she confided, "if its true, as Liane says, you're madly in love with another woman!"
She vanished, was heard briefly conferring with the butler in the entrance hall, then scampering up the stairs.
"And well for me!" Lanyard admitted then, with a wry grimace of self-knowledge; and forthwith closed his mind to the troubling concept of Folly as a woman too kindly inclined, a thought it wouldn't do to dally with for weightier reasons than that it was the truth Liane had babbled.