Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/156

142 The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth. "Yes—it was a squash!"

"And once," his hostess pursued, "in the lobby of the opera?"

"After 'Tristan'—yes; but with some awful grand people I didn't know."

She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. "Oh, the Pennimans are nobody! But now," she asked, "you've come, you say, on 'business'?"

"Very important, please—which accounts for the hour I've ventured and the appearance I present."

"I don't ask you too much to 'account,'" Lady Sandgate kindly said; "but I can't not wonder if she hasn't told you what things have happened."

He cast about. "She has had no chance to tell me anything—beyond the fact of her being here."

"Without the reason?"

"'The reason'?" he echoed.

She gave it up, going straighter. "She's with me then as an old firm friend. Under my care and protection."