‘And it’s always a pity to spoil one’s breakfast. I can tell from your manner, mon ami, it’s something disagreeable. What have I been and gone and done?’ She was dancing, poor thing, in her little vulgar way, on hot iron. But her eyes kept their inconsistent coolness. ‘I heard something today which you are not in the way of hearing. You have--probably--no conception that it could be said.’ ‘Then she has been telling other people. ABSOLUTELY the worst thing she could do!’ Mrs. Innes exclaimed privately, sitting unmoved, her face a little too expectant. ‘You won’t be prepared for it--you may be shocked and hurt by it. Indeed, I think there is no need to repeat it to you. But I must put you on your guard. Men are coarser, you know, than women; they are apt to put their own interpretation--’ ‘What is it?’ There was a physical gasp, a sharpness in her voice that brought Innes’s eyes from the floor to her face. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but--don’t overestimate it, don’t let it worry you. It was simply a very impertinent--a very disagreeable reference to you and Mr. Holmcroft, I think, in connection with the Dovedell’s picnic. It was a particularly silly thing as well, and I am sure no one would attach any importance to it, but it was said openly at the Club, and--’ ‘Who said it?’ Mrs. Innes demanded. A flood of colour rushed over her face. Horace marked that she blushed. ‘I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, Violet. It certainly was not meant for your ears.’ ‘If I’m not to know who said it, I don’t see why I should pay any attention to it. Mere idle rumour--’ Innes bit his lip. ‘Captain Gordon said it,’ he replied. ‘Bobby Gordon! DO tell me what he said! I’m dying to know. Was he very disagreeable? I DID give his dance away on Thursday night.’ Innes looked at her with the curious distrust which she often inspired in him. He had a feeling that he would like to put her out of the room into a place by herself, and keep her there. ‘I won’t repeat what he said.’ Colonel Innes took up the ‘Saturday Review’. ‘Oh, do, Horace! I particularly want to know.’ Innes said nothing. ‘Horace! Was it--was it anything about Mr. Holmcroft being my Secretariat baa-lamb?’ ‘If you adorn your guess with a little profanity,’ said Innes, acidly, ‘you won’t be far wrong.’ Mrs. Violet burst into a peal of laughter. ‘Why, you old goose!’ she articulated, behind her handkerchief; ‘he said that to ME.’ Innes laid down the ‘Saturday Review’. ‘To you!’ he repeated; ‘Gordon said it to you!’ ‘Rather!’ Mrs. Violet was still mirthful. ‘I’m not sure that he didn’t call poor little Homie something worse than that. It’s the purest jealousy on his part--nothing to make a fuss about.’ The fourth skin which enables so many of us to be callous to all but the relative meaning of careless phrases had not been given to Innes, and her words fell upon his bare sense of propriety. ‘Jealous,’ he said, ‘of a married woman? I find that difficult to understand.’