"Intolerable!" said Fontenoy, in exasperation. "And at least he might refrain from dragging a girl into it! We weren't saints in my day, but we weren't in the habit of choosing well-brought-up maidens of twenty in our own set for our confidantes. You know, I suppose, what broke up the party at Castle Luton?"
"Ancoats told me nothing. I have heard some gossip from Harding Watton," said George, unwillingly. It was one of his strongest characteristics, this fastidious and even haughty dislike of chatter about other people's private affairs, a dislike which, in the present case, had been strengthened by his growing antipathy to Harding.
"How should he know?" said Fontenoy, angrily. He was glad enough to use Watton as a political tool, but had never yet admitted him to the smallest social intimacy.
Yet with Tressady he felt no difficulty in talking over these private affairs; and he did, in fact, report the whole story—that same story with which Marcella had startled Betty Leven on the night in question: how Ancoats on this Sunday evening had decoyed this handsome, impressionable girl, to whom throughout the winter he had been paying decided and even ostentatious court, into a tête-à-tête—had poured out to her frantic confessions of his attachment to the theatrical lady—a woman he could never marry, whom his mother could never meet, but with whom, nevertheless, come what might, he was determined to live and die. She—Madeleine—was his friend, his good angel. Would she go to his mother and break it to her? Would she understand, and forgive him? There must be no opposition, or he would shoot himself. And so on, till the poor girl, worn out with excitement and grief, tottered into Mrs. Allison's room more dead than alive.
But at that point Fontenoy stopped abruptly.
George agreed that the story was almost incredible, and added the inward and natural comment of the public-school man—that if people will keep their boys at home, and defraud them of the kickings that are their due, they may look out for something unwholesome in the finished product. Then, aloud, he said:
"I should imagine that Ancoats was acting through the greater part of that. He had said to himself that such a scene would be effective—and would be new."
"Good heavens!—why, that makes it ten thousand times more abominable than before!"
"I daresay," said George, coolly. "But it also makes the future, perhaps, a little more hopeful—throws some light on the passion or pose alternative. My impression is, that if we can only find an effective exit for Ancoats,—a last act that he would consider worthy of him,—he will bow himself out of the business willingly enough."
Fontenoy smiled rather gloomily, and the two walked on in silence.