“But I can’t see your object in mystifying me like this!” he protested. “We are friends—very old friends—surely you can at least tell me the truth?”
“I’ve told you the truth, dear boy. Muriel Mortimer is an undesirable acquaintance for you. Is not that a friendly warning.”
“A warning, certainly—but hardly a friendly one,” answered Dudley, swinging over a stile into the high-road. “I mention to you a woman I’ve heard about,” he went on as the pair were walking side by side again, “and you at once give me these extraordinary warnings, without offering any explanation whatsoever. Who is this mysterious ward? What is she?”
“I’ve already told you who she is,” his companion replied, shifting his gun as he marched onward. “What she is I don’t know. All I am sure about is that the less you see of her the better, Dudley—that’s all.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because of something I’ve discovered,” the elder man replied.
“Something about her?”
“Well—yes. Something about her.”
“But you speak as though we were intimate, my dear fellow, and as if I were about to lose my heart to her!” exclaimed Chisholm.
“You’ll probably know her soon, but when you are introduced, remember my warning, and drop her at once like a live coal.”