'When?'
'Just then.'
'I call Heaven to witness,' cried Frederick Mulliner, 'that not by so much as a single word have I hinted at my opinion that your conduct is the vilest and most revolting that has ever been drawn to my attention. I never so much as suggested that your revelation had shocked me to the depths of my soul.'
'Yes, you did. You sniffed.'
'If Bingley-on-Sea is not open for being sniffed in at this season,' said Frederick coldly, 'I should have been informed earlier.'
'I had a perfect right to get engaged to anyone I liked and as quick as I liked, after the abominable way you behaved.'
'Abominable way I behaved? What do you mean?'
'You know.'
'Pardon me, I do not know. If you are alluding to my refusal to wear the tie you bought for me on my last birthday, I can but repeat my statement, made to you at the time, that, apart from being the sort of tie no upright man would be seen dead in a ditch with, its colours were those of a Cycling, Angling, and Dart-Throwing club of which I am not a member.'
'I am not alluding to that. I mean the day I was going to the Ponderbys' and you promised to see me off at Paddington, and then you phoned and said you couldn't as you were detained by important business, and I thought, well, I think I'll go by the later train after all because that will give me time to lunch quietly at the Berkeley, and I went and lunched quietly at the Berkeley, and when I was there who should I see but you at a table at the other end of the room gorging yourself in the company of a beastly creature in a pink frock and henna'd hair. That's what I mean.'