Jones cocked an eye at him. "See here, you are not a knight-errant. The age of chivalry is over." The novelist paused and exclaimed: "What am I saying! The age of chivalry is not over. It can't be. Last night, Verelst dined with a monster!" Lennox pushed at the papers. "If I were alone concerned, I would thank Paliser. He has done me a good turn. He has set me straight." Then, to the listening novelist, who later found the story very useful, Lennox repeated Cassy's version of the rhyme and reason of the broken engagement. The tale of it concluded, Lennox flicked at a speck. "I am grateful to Paliser for that, but for the manner in which he treated her, I shall have a word with him. Just one." Jones sat down. "A word, eh? Well, why not? Flipping a man in the face with a glove was fashionable in the days of Charles II. Tweaking the nose was Georgian. The horsewhip went out with Victoria. Posting your man was always rather coffee-house and a rough-and-tumble very hooligan. If I were you, which I am not, but if I were, I would adopt contemporaneous methods. To-day we just sit about and backbite. That is progress. Let me commend it to you." With a wide movement, Lennox swept the papers, shoved them into a pocket and stood up. Jones also stood up. "Got an appetite? Well, dining has the great disadvantage of taking it away. Come along." Lennox put on his hat. "I am going first to Park Avenue." No you're not, thought Jones, who, with an agility which for him was phenomenal, hurried to the door and backed against it. Lennox motioned him aside. Jones, without budging, lied. "They're out of town." It was very imbecile. He knew it was, knew, too, that Lennox knew it, and, for the imbecile lie, he substituted another. "I mean they are dining out." "What the devil are you driving at?" Lennox asked, and not very civilly either. "A windmill, I suppose. You look like one. I----" Jones broke off. The expression on Lennox' face arrested him. The attempt at interference, the stupid evasions, the conviction which these things produced, that there was something behind them, something secreted, something about Margaret that Jones knew and which he was concealing, made him livid. "Out with it." Jones looked at him, looked away, adjusted his neckcloth, vacated the door, crossed the room and sat down. He did not know to what saint to vow himself. But realising that it was all very useless, that everything is, except such solicitude as one pilgrim may show to another, and that, anyway, Lennox would soon hear it, he gave it to him. "She is engaged to Paliser." Lennox, who was approaching, stopped short. "Miss Austen is?" Jones nodded. "To Paliser?" But it seemed too rough and, to take the edge off, Jones added. "It may not be true." "How did you hear?" "Verelst told me. He dined there last night."