“I was aware that my silence might lead to something in the nature of an embarrassing contretemps, sir—”
“You thought that, did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were a good guesser,” I said, sucking down further Bohea.
“But it seemed to me, sir, that whatever might occur was all for the best.”
I would have put in a crisp word or two here, but he carried on without giving me the opp.
“I thought that possibly, on reflection, sir, your views being what they are, you would prefer your relations with Sir Roderick Glossop and his family to be distant rather than cordial.”
“My views? What do you mean, my views?”
“As regards a matrimonial alliance with Miss Honoria Glossop, sir.”
Something like an electric shock seemed to zip through me. The man had opened up a new line of thought. I suddenly saw what he was driving at, and realized all in a flash that I had been wronging this faithful fellow. All the while I supposed he had been landing me in the soup, he had really been steering me away from it. It was like those stories one used to read as a kid about the traveller going along on a dark night and his dog grabs him by the leg of his trousers and he says “Down, sir! What are you doing, Rover?” and the dog hangs on and he gets rather hot under the collar and curses a bit, but the dog won’t let him go, and then suddenly the moon shines through the clouds and he finds he’s been standing on the edge of a precipice and one more step would have—well, anyway, you get the idea; and what I’m driving at is that much the same sort of thing seemed to have been happening now.