“I have said you may ask,” I fleered rudely. “But for me— Gad’s life! I am not in the witness box.”
He took his snuff mull from his waistcoat pocket and offered it me, then took a pinch and brushed from his satin coat imaginary grains with prodigious care.
“You are perhaps not aware that I have the right to ask. It chances that this is my house.”
“Indeed! And the lady we have just left——?”
“——Is, pardon me, none of your concern.”
“Ah! I’m not so sure of that.”
“Faith then, you’ll do well to make sure.”
“And—er—Mistress Antoinette Westerleigh?”
“Quite another matter! You’re out of court again, Mr. Montagu.”
“Egad, I enter an exception. The lady we have just left is of another mind in the affair. She is the court of last resort, and, I believe, not complaisant to your suit.”