Hugh glanced up quickly. There was the murmur of voices from within the room they had just left.
"Is it that you are too jealous of your good name to allow it to be bruited abroad in a scandal, as you say?"
Mr. Bonnithorne's face wore a curious expression at that moment.
"It's not my good name that is in question," he said, quietly, and turned back to the door.
"Whose then? His?"
But the lawyer already held the door ajar, and was passing into the room.
Hugh Ritson made his way to the bedroom occupied by Paul Drayton. He opened the door without knocking. It was dark within. Thin streaks of dusty sunlight shot from between a pair of heavy curtains. The air was noisome with dead tobacco smoke and the fumes of stale beer. Hugh's gorge rose, but he conquered his disgust.
"Who's there?" said a husky voice from behind the dark hangings of a four-post bed that was all but hidden in the gloom.
"The friends are here," said Hugh Ritson, cheerily. "How long will you be?"
There was a suppressed chuckle.