“We’ve made friends already,” said Miss Gault to Wolf, “and I’ve told her I knew her well by sight. How do you do, Mr. Torp! I was telling Mr. Solent that I knew your daughter already, though I’ve never spoken to her; but she’s not a young lady one can forget!”

What Mr. Torp’s reply to this was Wolf did not hear. Aware that the situation had arranged itself, he found as he kept looking at Gerda’s face, as she listened to Miss Gault and her father, that he was beginning to grow nervously hostile to all these explanations. Why couldn’t he and Gerda go straight off now, out of this hurly-burly, out anywhere⁠ ⁠… so as to be at peace and alone?

“Well, goodbye,” Gerda was saying. “Perhaps we’ll see you again later; but Father and I haven’t half gone the round yet, have we, Father?”