'Wouldn't have thought it of you, Pickering,' said Lord Wetherby.
Mr Pickering found no words. 'Wouldn't, honestly. Low trick!'
'But I tell you—'
'Devilish low trick!' repeated Lord Wetherby, with a shake of the head. 'Laws of hospitality—eaten our bread and salt, what!—all that sort of thing—kill valuable monkey—not done, you know—low, very low!'
And he followed his wife, now in full retreat, with scorn and repulsion written in her very walk.
'Mr Pickering!'
It was Claire. She stood there, holding something towards him, something that glittered in the moonlight. Her voice was hard, and the expression on her face suggested that in her estimation he was a particularly low-grade worm, one of the submerged tenth of the worm world.
'Eh?' said Mr Pickering, dazedly.
He looked at what she had in her hand, but it conveyed nothing to his overwrought mind.
'Take it!'
'Eh?'