“Ideas—­mine!” Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square.  “Look you here, my man; you’ve an unwholesome mind, which probably you can’t help, but a tongue which you can help, and shall!  If there is a breath of this repeated ...”

“I’ll not be talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,...”  Barrett had blustered....

“You shall, and I’m doing it ...”

“Don’t you forget there’s a Gawd above all, Who ’as said...”

“You’re a low scandalmonger!...”

And so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun.  Oleron had returned wrathfully to his own house, and thenceforward, looking out of his windows, had seen Barrett’s face at odd times, lifting blinds or peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of Heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him.

The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron’s domestic arrangements.  Barrett’s tongue, he gathered, had already been busy; he was looked at askance by the dwellers of the square; and he judged it better, until he should be able to obtain other help, to make his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the small shops of the immediate neighbourhood.  For the rest, housekeeping was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits....

Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which it was better that he should not be disturbed.

He was looking out of his window one midday rather tired, not very well, and glad that it was not very likely he would have to stir out of doors, when he saw Elsie Bengough crossing the square towards his house.  The weather had broken; it was a raw and gusty day; and she had to force her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her opulent figure and her veil spinning and streaming behind her.

Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively.  Seizing his hat, he sprang to the door and descended the stairs at a run.  A sort of panic had seized him.  She must be prevented from setting foot in the place.  As he ran along the alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves as if something drew them.  He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall....

He met her at the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness.

“This is really too bad, Elsie!  Just as I’m urgently called away!  I’m afraid it can’t be helped though, and that you’ll have to think me an inhospitable beast.”  He poured it out just as it came into his head.

She asked if he was going to town.

“Yes, yes—­to town,” he replied.  “I’ve got to call on—­on Chambers.  You know Chambers, don’t you?  No, I remember you don’t; a big man you once saw me with....  I ought to have gone yesterday, and—­” this he felt to be a brilliant effort—­“and he’s going out of town this afternoon.  To Brighton.  I had a letter from him this morning.”