He laid down the spoon with which he had been consuming the viscous fluid.
“If you hear that I saw her home, Mrs. Altham,” he said, “tell them it is not true. From what you have already told me, I gather there is talk going on. There is no reason for such talk.”
He paused a moment, and then a line or two of the intensely Swinburnian effusion which he had written last night fermented in his head, making him infinitely more preposterous.
“I assure you that at present there is no reason for such talk,” he said earnestly.
Now Mrs. Altham, with her wide interest in all that concerned anybody else, might be expected to feel the intensest curiosity on such a topic, but somehow she felt very little, since she knew that behind the talk there was really very little topic, and the gallant misgivi
