"Yes," she said quietly, "that's just what it is. It has grown on me, little by little; I can't help liking Miss Henley."
"Well," Mr. Vimpany remarked, "you are a fool!" He looked at her cunningly. "Suppose I do make myself useful, what am I to gain by it?"
"Let us get back," she suggested, "to the gentleman who invited you to dinner, and made you tipsy for his own purposes."
"I'll break every bone in his skin!"
"Don't talk nonsense! Leave Mr. Mountjoy to me."
"Do you take his part? I can tell you this. If I drank too much of that poisonous French stuff, Mountjoy set me the example. He was tipsy—as you call it—shamefully tipsy, I give you my word of honour. What's the matter now?"
His wife (so impenetrably cool, thus far) had suddenly become excited. There was not the smallest fragment of truth in what he had just said of Hugh, and Mrs. Vimpany was not for a moment deceived by it. But the lie had, accidentally, one merit—it suggested to her the idea which she had vainly tried to find over her cup of tea. "Suppose I show you how you may be revenged on Mr. Mountjoy," she said.
"Well?"
"Will you remember what I asked you to do for me, if Lord Harry takes us by surprise?"
He produced his pocket-diary, and told her to make a memorandum of it. She wrote as briefly as if she had been writing a telegram: "Keep Lord Harry from seeing Miss Henley, till I have seen her first."