"He will tell you," said the lady, vouchsafing nothing further. After all, she had had a fair share of the lime-light, and there was no need to risk an anticlimax. "If you had only listened to me when I warned you ... but there! men are all alike."
She swept from the room, and the bewildered clergyman appealed to the heap in the chair.
"Mr. Bangs—Mr. Hedderwick, perhaps I ought to say—will you be kind enough to tell me what it all means?"
Robert raised a stricken head.
"I thought, Mr. Peters, that things were bad enough when I came. Your wife's news proves to me that I am wrong. My name is not Bangs, but Hedderwick."
"So I gathered," said the vicar uncomfortably. "I think you owe me an explanation of your reasons for adopting a false name."
Robert glanced wildly at the clock.
"There is no time to go into details now. She may be here at any minute. But for the moment, Mr. Peters, please accept my word that I am involved in no disgrace—no shameful action. I am a churchwarden——"
"You really are?" There was excuse for the implied doubt.
"I really am, and innocent. My fault is an excessive love for romance and a temporary desertion of my wife. Oh! do not misunderstand me!" he begged, as he noticed an ecclesiastical stiffening. "I simply ran away for a short holiday—I meant to go back very soon! Surely, surely, you can understand! You are married—I mean, a clergyman in the exercise of his duties must have a wide knowledge of the world—a certain sympathy...."