"Ah, that's because you don't trust me. In other words, you don't know me. That's one of the most annoying things in life: to be really an excellent sort, and to be quite unable to make people see it at the first go-off. Well, here goes. My worthy brother-in-law finds you and my niece holding hands in a shed."
"We were not," said Vernon. "I was telling her fortune--"
"It's my lead now," interrupted the lady. "Your turn next. He being what he is--to the pure all things are impure, you know--instantly draws the most harrowing conclusions, hits you with a stick.--By the way, you behaved uncommonly well about that."
"Thank you," said Vernon, smiling a little. It is pleasant to be appreciated.
"Yes, really very decently, indeed. I daresay it wouldn't have hurt a fly, but if you'd been the sort of man he thinks you are--However that's neither here nor there. He hits you with a stick, locks the child into her room--What did you say?"
"Nothing," said Vernon.
"All right. I didn't hear it. Locks her in her room, and wires to my sister. Takes a carriage to Sevenoaks to do it too, to avoid scandal. I happen to be at my sister's, on my way from Cairo to Norway, so I undertake to run down. He meets me at the station, and wants me to go straight home and blackguard Betty. But I prefer to deal with principals."
"You mean--"
"I mean that I know as well as you do that whatever has happened has been your doing and not that dear little idiot's. Now, are you going to tell me about it?"
He had rehearsed already a form of words in which "Brother artists" should have loomed large. But now that he rose, shrugged his shoulders and spoke, it was in words that had not been rehearsed.
"Look here, Miss Desmond," said he, "the fact is, you're right. I haven't any intentions--certainly not dishonourable ones. But I was frightfully bored in the country, and your niece is bored, too--more bored than I am. No one ever understands or pities the boredom of the very young," he added pensively.
"Well?"
"Well, that's all there is to it. I liked meeting her, and she liked meeting me."
"And the fortune-telling? Do you mean to tell me you didn't enjoy holding the child's hand and putting her in a silly flutter?"
"I deny the flutter," he said, "but--Well, yes, of course I enjoyed it. You wouldn't believe me if I said I didn't."