Tremayne was prompt to give him the assurance. “No innuendo at all. A plain statement of fact.”
“The innuendo I suggested lay in the application of the phrase. Do you make it personal to myself?”
“Of course not,” said Sir Terence, cutting in and speaking sharply. “What an assumption!”
“I am asking Captain Tremayne,” the Count insisted, with grim firmness, notwithstanding his deferential smile to Sir Terence.
“I spoke quite generally, sir,” Tremayne assured him, partly under the suasion of Sir Terence’s interposition, partly out of consideration for the ladies, who were looking scared. “Of course, if you choose to take it to yourself, sir, that is a matter for your own discretion. I think,” he added, also with a smile, “that the ladies find the topic tiresome.”
“Perhaps we may have the pleasure of continuing it when they are no longer present.”
“Oh, as you please,” was the indifferent answer. “Carruthers, may I trouble you to pass the salt? Lady O’Callaghan was complaining the other night of the abuse of salt in Portuguese cookery. It is an abuse I have never yet detected.”
“I can’t conceive Lady O’Callaghan complaining of too much salt in anything, begad,” quoth O’Moy, with a laugh. “If you had heard the story she told me about—”
“Terence, my dear!” his wife checked him, her fine brows raised, her stare frigid.
“Faith, we go from bad to worse,” said Carruthers. “Will you try to improve the tone of the conversation, Miss Armytage? It stands in urgent need of it.”