"Me to come and talk it over in a friendly sort of way. Try to pave the way to a good understanding.... Lots of expressions she used!..." He paused to recall some. "... Oh ah!—I remember ... 'painful misunderstanding'—that was one. And 'tact and delicacy.' She's a clever woman, Lotty, that's a fact, Master Titus."
"Devilish clever, John! Everyone knows that. 'Tact and delicacy' is a capital expression. It reminds me of Mrs. Chapone, but I don't know why." John seemed flattered, and Challis continued, with some disposition to laugh outright: "Look here, old chap! You and that clever lady of yours may just as well be easy. You think Polly Anne and I have quarrelled. But we haven't. And we shan't. I tell you, the thing's out of the question. Sheer nonsense!"
Mr. Eldridge's idea of identity comes to the fore again. "Just what I said—'reg'lar tommy rot.' Mrs. J. E., she agreed with me, down to the ground. There was another expression she used, now! ... what the dickens was it?... Oh, I know!—no, I don't.... Oh yes!—'parties God had joined together let no man put asunder.' Nice feelin' about that!"
"Well!—no man's going to put anyone asunder this time, whether God united them or the Devil. Don't you go and repeat that remark to Mrs. J. E., John."
"No—no, Master Titus! Never say anything—never say a word!—that's the rule. Never say the Devil—never say God; not before females. Keep 'em snug! Good behaviour's paramount—can't be too particular! Expression of my wife's.... I say, I must be runnin'."
"They'll be sending for you from the Office if you don't." Then, as his visitor was departing by the front gate, he called to him from the house-steps: "Sorry the missis and the kids aren't back. They went to Tulse Hill yesterday. I'm going down there presently, only I've some work to finish first." And Harmood overheard, and condemned her employer for his contradictory testimony. "'Ark at him lying!" was the candid form her censure took. Mrs. Steptoe, saying a word in arrest of judgment, for the pleasure of gainsaying Harmood, was met by "Now, didn't he say, only this minute, Mrs. Challis would be back to lunch?"
The question whether, when Mr. Challis remained to lunch at home, as though he expected his wife's return, and immediately after took his departure for Tulse Hill, he had not reconciled his apparently conflicting statements, formed the subject of intemperate controversy between Harmood and Mrs. Steptoe during the remainder of the afternoon.
No doubt Challis had treasured a hope in his heart that his wife and the children would reappear. He succeeded, to his own satisfaction, in pretending he had known they wouldn't, all along; and by the time he had reached Tulse Hill Station, believed he had only remained to lunch at Wimbledon to write important letters.
He rang more than once—two or three times more—at his mother-in-law's, without any response. The first time someone, he thought, looked from behind the blind of an upper window; and then two voices, one dictatorial, the other compliant, conversed up and down the staircase of Glenvairloch, for that was the name of Marianne's mother's villa at Tulse Hill. The next-door neighbour lived at Bannochar.