“You are the man that wouldn’t let my friend Lois drive him in my car, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said defiantly, but rather guiltily.  “Did she tell you about that?  It’s an awful long time ago.”

“She told me something about it.”

“And you’ve remembered it all this long while!”

“Yes,” she answered, and her thin, queer tone and her tepid, impartial glance had the effect of a challenge to him to justify himself.

“And don’t you think I was quite right?” he ventured.

“She drives very well.”  It was not the sort of answer he was expecting.  His desire was to argue.

“She didn’t drive very well then,” he said, with conviction.

“Was that a reason for your leaving her to drive home alone?”

Women were astounding!

“She ought to have let the chauffeur drive,” he maintained.

“Ah!  A man mustn’t expect too much from a woman.”

“But I was risking my life in that car!  Do you mean to say I ought to have kept on risking it?”

“I don’t express any opinion on that.  That was for you to decide....  You must admit it was very humiliating for poor Lois.”

He felt himself cornered, but whether justly or unjustly he was uncertain.

“Was she vexed?”

“No, she wasn’t vexed.  Lois isn’t the woman to be vexed.  But I have an idea she was a little hurt.”

“Did she say so?”

“Say so?  Lois?  She’d never say anything against anybody.  Lois is a perfect angel....  Isn’t she, Laurencine?”

Laurencine was being monopolized by Everard.

“What did you say?” the girl asked, collecting herself.

“I was just saying what an angel Lois is.”

“Oh, she is!” the younger sister agreed, with immense and sincere emphasis.

George, startled, said to himself suddenly: 

“Was I mistaken in her?  Some girls you are mistaken in!  They’re regular bricks, but they keep it from you at first.”

Somehow, in spite of a slight superficial mortification, he was very pleased by the episode of the conversation, and his curiosity was titillated.

“Lois would have come to-night instead of Laurencine,” Miss Wheeler went on, “only she wasn’t feeling very well.”

“Is she in London?  I’ve only seen her once from that day to this, and then we didn’t get near each other owing to the crush.  So we didn’t speak.  It was at Mrs. Orgreave’s.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Did she tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Is she at your flat?”

“Yes; but she’s not well.”

“Not in bed, I hope, or anything like that?”

“Oh no!  She’s not in bed.”

Laurencine threw laughingly across the table: 

“She’s as well as I am.”

It was another aspect of the younger sister.