and pretending she was overwhelmed with grief at the DEBACLE she was deliberately organising.
“Then part,” she cried, “part. If you don't want a smashing up,—part! You two have got to be parted. You've got never to see each other ever, never to speak.” There was a zest in her voice. “We're not circulating stories,” she denied. “No! And Curmain never told us anything—Curmain is an EXCELLENT young man; oh! a quite excellent young man. You misjudged him altogether.”...
I was equally unsuccessful with Bailey. I caught the little wretch in the League Club, and he wriggled and lied. He wouldn't say where he had got his facts, he wouldn't admit he had told any one. When I gave him the names of two men who had come to me astonished and incredulous, he attempted absurdly to make me think they had told HIM. He did his horrible little best to suggest that honest old Quackett, who had just left England for the Cape, was the real scandalmonger. That struck me as mean, even for Bailey. I've still the odd vivid impression of his fluting voice, excusing the inexcusable, his big, shifty face evading me, his perspiration-beaded forehead, the shrugging shoulders, and the would-be exculpatory gestures—Houndsditch gestures—of his enormous ugly hands.
“I can assure you, my dear fellow,” he said; “I can assure you we've done everything to shield you—everything.”...
3
Isabel came after dinner one evening and talked in the office. She made a white-robed, dusky figure against the deep blues of my big window. I sat at my desk and tore a quill pen to pieces as I