He grew angry.  A man doesn’t like to be coldly called a damfool at his own table.  He rose on his spurs, in his little red bantam way.  Was I too much of an idiot to see the connection?  As soon as the Carlisle business became known, this young scoundrel flies the country.  Couldn’t I see an inch before my blind nose?  Forbearing to question this remarkable figure of speech, I asked him how so confidential a matter could have become known.

“Everything gets known in this infernal little town,” he retorted.

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” said I.  “Half everything gets known—­the unimportant half.  The rest is supplied by malicious or prejudiced invention.”

We discussed the question after the futile way of men until we went into the drawing-room, where Betty played and sang to us until it was time to go home.

Marigold was about to lift me into the two-seater when Betty, who had been lurking in her car a little way off, ran forward.

“Would it bore you if I came in for a quarter of an hour?”

“Bore me, my dear?” said I.  “Of course not.”

So a short while afterwards we were comfortably established in my library.

“You rang me up to-day about Phyllis Gedge.”

“I did,” said I.

She lit a cigarette and seated herself on the fender-stool.  She has an unconscious knack of getting into easy, loose-limbed attitudes.  I said admiringly: 

“Do you know you’re a remarkably well-favoured young person?”

And as soon as I said it, I realised what a tremendous factor Betty was in my circumscribed life.  What could I do without her sweet intimacy?  If Willie Connor’s Territorial regiment, like so many others, had been ordered out to India, and she had gone with him, how blank would be the days and weeks and months!  I thanked God for granting me her graciousness.

She smiled and blew me a kiss.  “That’s very gratifying to know,” she said.  “But it has nothing to do with Phyllis.”

“Well, what about Phyllis?”

“I’ll tell you,” she replied.

And she told me.  Her story was not of world-shaking moment, but it interested me.  I have since learned its substantial correctness and am able to add some supplementary details.

You see, things were like this....  In order to start I must go back some years....  I have always had a warm corner in my heart for little Phyllis Gedge, ever since she was a blue-eyed child.  My wife had a great deal to do with it.  She was a woman of dauntless courage and clear vision into the heart of things.  I find many a reflection of her in Betty.  Perhaps that is why I love Betty so dearly.