“I certainly did not,” he responded frigidly. “I was not engaging—her.”
Brett appeared entirely unabashed.
“No. Or you might have found she couldn’t show quite such a clean bill as her brother,” he returned, smiling broadly.
By this time they had re-entered Coventry’s study. Decanter and syphon, together with a couple of tumblers, had been placed on the table in readiness by a thoughtful servant. Eliot glanced at these preparations with concealed annoyance, but, compelled by the laws of hospitality, inquired curtly:
“Will you have a drink?”
Brett assented amicably and established himself in a chair by the fire, the puppy sprawling beatifically across his knees while he pulled its satin-smooth ears with caressing fingers.
“You can never trust red hair,” he went on, accepting the drink Coventry had mixed for him. Then, catching the other’s eye, he threw back his head and laughed with that impudent, friendly charm of his that discounted half his deviltries. “Oh, I can guess what you’re thinking! And you’re quite right. I ought to know—because I’m one of the red-headed tribe myself.”
“It certainly passed through my mind,” admitted Eliot.
“Well, you can’t trust ‘em. It’s true. There’s always a bit of the devil in them. And I happen to know that that demure little person down at your cottage has sown quite a sprinkling of wild oats.”
“Wild oats in a woman are a very different thing from wild oats in a man,” remarked Eliot, pouring himself out a whisky.