"My dear chap, I don't want you to tell lies for me!" said Gardiner hastily. He was more than surprised; he was appalled. "In point of fact, I'm not sorry it has come out. I've had no peace of my life these last two months, with Mrs. Trent going about like an unexploded bomb. I knew she'd never rest till she harried me into the dock." He perceived, as he spoke, a certain change in the atmosphere. Denis had been sufficiently far away before; now he seemed to recede to the North Pole. There was a snapshot of Dorothea in her flying kit on the mantelpiece. Was this the explanation? Surely not! Surely she was the last woman in the world to attract a man like Denis! Gardiner, be it remembered, had never met that eager child who had learned to fly. "It's about her I want to speak to you," he broke the ice determinedly. "Here's the point. Do you, or do you not, remember what Trent said in that last speech of his, just before I let fly at him?"
"I'm hardly likely to forget it."
"No, no, not the sense, the words; the actual phrasing he used. Do you remember that?"
He took a moment to think. "Perhaps not. No, not to swear to."
"Good! Then it's all plain sailing. Tell everything that happened up till then; be as discursive as you please about my share in the business; but say, and swear, and stick to it that you can't remember that last speech, and at any price don't let it be dragged out of you."
"Very well."
"At any price, you understand?"
"At any price?"
"Yes; absolutely without reserve, at any price."