"Then your mother was Cicely Treherne, and she married an Arnaud?"
But he weathered it. He did it with his rascally eyes. He smiled down on her.
"Well ... I shouldn't be allowed to swear it in a court of law, because it was before I was born, you see."
The smile conquered. She laughed. I cut quickly in, my watch half out of my pocket. Gunpowder was safer than family history with Madge Aird about.
"Time?" I said.
"Ought we to be going?"
"The tram has a way of filling up."
"Then don't let's miss it," said Madge, drawing on her gloves. "Thank you for a most delightful afternoon, Mr Arnaud (all my friends are 'Mr' for at least a week, you know). I think the pictures are fascinating; they make our books look very dull. Good-bye."
"Oh, I'm coming to see you off," he said.
Something in his last words, I really can't tell you what, made me take a swift resolve. If he was going to see us off, I was going to see him off also. I had a superstitious idea that it might be necessary. He had bamboozled Alec about his delicate chest, had only just evaded that question of Madge's that simply meant, if you like to do a little sum about it, that his mother had borne him at two different dates with a quarter of a century between them. Blandly as he might cover it up, I now expected nothing but tricks from him—tricks coolly and resolutely planned and carried out without a moment's compunction or hesitation. Very well. He was going to be watched if I had eyes in my head.