‘He won’t believe: too—bloated.’
‘I think,’ said Sheila indignantly, ‘it is hardly fair to speak of a very old and a very true friend of mine in such—well, vulgar terms as that. Besides, Arthur, as for believing—without in the least desiring to hurt your feelings—I must candidly warn you, some people won’t.’
‘Come along,’ said Lawford, with a faint gust of laughter; ‘let’s see.’
They went quickly downstairs, Sheila with less dignity, perhaps, than she had been surprised into since she had left a slimmer girlhood behind. She swept into the gaze of the two gentlemen standing together on the hearthrug; and so was caught, as it were, between a rain of conflicting glances, for her husband had followed instantly, and stood now behind her, stooping a little, and with something between contempt and defiance confronting an old fat friend, whom that one brief challenging instant had congealed into a condition of passive and immovable hostility.
Mr Danton composed his chin in his collar, and deliberately turned himself towards his companion. His small eyes wandered, and instantaneously met and rested on those of Mrs Lawford.
‘Arthur thought he would prefer to come down and see you himself.’
‘You take such formidable risks, Lawford,’ said Mr Bethany in a dry, difficult voice.
‘Am I really to believe,’ Danton began huskily. ‘I am sure, Bethany, you will—My dear Mrs Lawford!’ said he, stirring vaguely, glancing restlessly.
‘It was not my wish, Vicar, to come at all,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘To tell you the truth, I am too tired to care a jot either way. And’—he lifted a long arm—‘I must positively refuse to produce the least, the remotest proof that I am not, so far as I am personally aware, even the Man in the Moon. Danton at heart was always an incorrigible sceptic. Aren’t you, T. D.? You pride your dear old brawn on it in secret?’
‘I really—’ began Danton in a rich still voice.