George smiled tolerantly. "But his wife isn't doing the business. It's the business, not the social interests, we have to consider.
"Oh, but she is in the business," Alys explained. "I think it's because she's jealous of him; she wants to be around the office and watch him."
Geneviève interposed. "Mrs. Allen owns a lot of land herself, and she looks after it. It seems quite natural to me."
"But she has a husband," Alys rebuked.
"Yes," agreed Geneviève, "but she probably married him for a husband, not a business agent."
George felt the reins of the situation slipping from him, so he jerked the curb of conversation.
"We are beside the issue," he said in his most legal manner. "The fact is that Allen knows more about the Kentwood district and the factory values than any one else, and I feel it my duty to advise Alys to leave her affairs in his hands. I'll see him for you in the morning."
He turned to Alys with a return of tolerantly protective inflection in his voice.
Geneviève shrugged, a faint ghost of a shrug. Had George been less absorbed in his own mental discomforts, he would have discovered there and then that the matter of his speech, not the manner of his delivery, was what held his wife's attention. No longer could rounded periods and eloquent sophistry hide from her his thoughts and intentions.
A telephone call interrupted the meal. He answered it with relief, bowing a hurried, self-important excuse to the ladies. But the voice that came over the wire was not modulated in tones of flattery.