"I was just saying, sir, how Mr. Byrne told Emily's people what he thought of her when they come worrying round the other day, so Cook was telling me. A proper hussy she must have been and no mistake--not Cook I mean, but that young Emily, gadding out night after night, young men and followers and the good Lord knows what all. Are you ready for your cutlet now, sir, and all that plaice left in the dish? Well, I never did, if you aren't a poor eater, Mr. Egerton--and there's no doubt she was out with one of them one night and went further than she meant, no doubt, but if you make your bed you must lie on it, though I've no doubt she's sorry now...." Mrs. Bantam passed out into the kitchen, her voice trailing distantly away like the voices of the Pilgrims in _Tannhauser_. John sat silent, pondering darkly her disclosures. It was a fortnight now since the fatal evening of Emily Gaunt's destruction and disposal. During that fortnight he had not once seen Stephen Byrne in private. They had met at the Underground Station; they had pressed against each other in the rattling train, shouting odd scraps of conversation with other members of The Chase; and John had marvelled at the easy cheerfulness of his friend. But since that night he had never "dropped in" or "looked in" at The House by the River in the evenings. He had never been asked to come, and he was glad. He was afraid of seeing Stephen alone, and he supposed that Stephen was afraid. He had wondered sometimes what was going on in that house, had felt sometimes that he ought to go round and be helpful. But he could not. Like all The Chase, he had heard through his domestic staff of the sudden and inexcusable disappearance of Emily Gaunt. The soundless, uncanny systems of communication, which the more skilled Indian tribes are reputed to employ, could not have disseminated with greater thoroughness or rapidity than Mrs. Byrne's cook the precise details of the Emily mystery; how they had carried on angrily without her for three or four days, railing at her defection and lack of faith; how Mr. Byrne had at last suggested that she might have met with an accident; how the police had been informed; how they had prowled about the garden and looked aimlessly under beds; how they had shaken their pompous heads again and gone away, and all the rest of it. There had been no explanation and few theories, so far, to account for the vanishing of Emily. Now Mrs. Bantam had given him one, invented, apparently, and propagated by Stephen. And it shook him like a blow. That poor girl--as good as gold, so far as he knew--should be slandered and vilified in death by the one man who should have taken care at least to keep her name clean. A fierce note of scorn and disgust broke involuntarily from him.