"If you're trying to suggest that she's not straight, you're reading something into her look that isn't there." "Come, Waddington, you know as well as I do that when a man's knocked about the world like you and me, he gets an instinct; he can tell pretty well by looking at her whether a woman's that sort or not." "My dear Corbett, my instinct is at least as good as yours. I've known Mrs. Levitt for three years, and I can assure she's as straight, as innocent, as your wife or mine." "Clever--clever and a bit unscrupulous." Again Sir John quoted Major Markham. "A woman like that can get round simple fellows like you and me, Waddington, in no time, if she gives her mind to it. That's why I won't have anything to do with her. She may be as straight and innocent as you please; but somehow or other she's causing a great deal of unpleasant talk, and if I were you I'd drop her. Drop her." "I shall do nothing of the sort." "My dear fellow, that's all very well, but when everybody knows your wife hasn't called on her--" "There was no need for Fanny to call on her. My relations with Mrs. Levitt were on a purely business footing--" "Well, I'd leave them there, and not too much footing either." "What can I do? Here she is, a war widow with nobody but me to look after her interests. She's got into the way of coming to me, and I'm not going back on the poor woman, Corbett, because of your absurd insinuations." "Not _my_ insinuations." "Anybody's insinuations then. Nobody has a right to insinuate anything about _me_. As for Fanny, she'll make a point of calling on her now. We were talking about it not long ago." "A bit hard on Mrs. Waddington to be let in for that." "You needn't worry. Fanny can afford to do pretty well what she likes." He had him there. Sir John knew that this was true of Fanny Waddington, as it was not true of Lady Corbett. He could remember the time when nobody called on his father and mother; and Lady Corbett could not, yet, afford to call on Mrs. Levitt before anybody else did. "Well," he said, "so long as Mrs. Levitt doesn't expect my wife to follow suit." "Mrs. Levitt's experience can't have led her to expect much in the way of kindness here." "Well, don't be too kind. You don't know how you may be landed. You don't know," said Sir John fatally, "what ideas you may have put into the poor woman's head." "I should be very sorry," said Mr. Waddington, "if I thought for one moment I had roused any warmer feelings--" But he wasn't sorry. He tried hard to make his face express a chivalrous regret, and it wouldn't. It was positively smiling, so agreeable was the idea conveyed by Sir John. He turned it over and over, drawing out its delicious flavour, while Sir John's little laughing eyes observed his enjoyment. "You don't know," he said, "_what_ you may have roused." There was something very irritating in his fat chuckle.