"No, thanks, Hughie," said Mrs. Leroy; "I prefer to look out of the window."

She walked across the room and began to gaze down into the street with her back to Hughie. Her husband, evidently struck with the suitability of this att.i.tude, rose and joined her.

"The fact is, Hughie," began Mrs. Leroy, staring resolutely at the house opposite, "Jack and I want to talk to you like a father and mother, and I can do it more easily if I look the other way."

"Same here," corroborated Leroy gruffly.

Hughie started, and surveyed the guilty-looking pair of backs before him with an uneasy suspicion. Surely he was not going to be treated to a third variation on the same theme!

"Go on, Jack!" was Mrs. Leroy's next remark.

"Can't be done, m'dear," replied the gentleman, after an obvious effort.

"Well, Hughie," continued Mrs. Leroy briskly, "as this coward has failed me, I must say it myself. I want to tell you that people are talking."

"Ursula Harbord, for instance," said Hughie drily.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"She delivered a lecture to me this morning. Gave me to understand that she darkly suspects me of being a knave, and made no attempt to conceal her conviction that I am a fool."

"Well, of course that's all nonsense," said Mrs. Leroy to a fly on the window-pane; "but really, Hughie, with all the money that her Uncle Jimmy left her, you ought to be able to give Joey more than you do, _shouldn't_ you? The child has to live in quite a small way--not really poor, you know, but hardly as an heiress ought to live. You give her surprisingly small interest on her money, Jack says--didn't you, Jack?"

Captain Leroy made no reply, but the deep shade of carmine on the back of his neck said "Sneak!" as plainly as possible.

"And you know he would be the last to say anything against you--wouldn't you, Jack?"

"Rather!" said Leroy, in a voice of thunder.

"Hughie," said Mrs. Leroy, turning impulsively, "won't you confide in me?"

Hughie kicked a coal in the grate in his usual fashion, and sighed.

"I can't, _really_," he said.

"Fact is, old man," broke in Leroy, in response to his wife's appealing glances, "we didn't want to say anything at all, but the missis thought it best--considerin' the way people are talkin', and all that. Can _I_ be of any use? Been speculatin', or anything?"

"No, Jack, I haven't," said Hughie shortly.

Mrs. Leroy gave a helpless look at her husband, and said desperately:

"But, Hughie, we can't leave things like this! You simply don't _know_ what stories are going about. It is ruining your chances with Joey, too.

She thinks you are a noodle."

"I know it," said Hughie.

"Well, look here," said Leroy, "can't you give us some sort of explanation--some yarn we could put about the place to account for this state of things--"

"What state of things?" said Hughie doggedly. He was in an unpleasant temper.

"Well, Hughie," said Mrs. Leroy, keeping hers, "here is Joan, known to have been left a lot of money for her immediate use,--she admits it herself,--living quite humbly and cheaply, and obviously not well off.

People are asking why. There are two explanations given. One, the more popular, is that you have embezzled or speculated the money all away.

The other, which prevails among the _elite_--"

"The people who are really in the know, you know," explained Leroy.

"Yes: _they_ say," continued his wife, "that Joan won't marry you, so you have retaliated by--by--"

"By cutting off supplies," suggested Hughie.

"Yes, until--"

"Until she is starved into submission--eh?"

"That's about the size of it, old son," said Leroy.

There was a long pause. Finally Hughie said:--

"Well, it's a pretty story; but, honestly, I'm not in a position to contradict it at present."

Mrs. Leroy desisted from plaiting the window-cord, swung round, walked deliberately to the fireplace, and laid a hand on Hughie's arm.

"Hughie," she said, in tones which her husband subsequently affirmed would have drawn ducks off a pond, "what have you done? Tell _us_!"

Leroy followed his wife across the room. "Get it off your chest, old man," he said, with the air of a father confessor.

Hughie smiled gratefully. He took Mrs. Leroy's two hands into one of his own, and laid the other on Jack Leroy's shoulder.

"Jack and Milly," he said earnestly, "my two pals!--I would rather tell you than anybody else; but--I simply _can't_! It's not my secret! You'll probably find out all about it some day. At present I must ask you to accept my a.s.surance that I'm not so black as I'm painted."

"Hughie," said Mrs. Leroy, "you are simply stupid! We have not come to you out of idle curiosity--"

"I know that," said Hughie heartily.

"And I think you might give us some sort of an inkling--a sort of favourable bulletin--that I could pa.s.s on to Joey, at any rate--"

"Joey!" said Hughie involuntarily; "Lord forbid!"

Mrs. Leroy, startled by the vehemence of his tone, paused; and her husband added dejectedly,--

"All right, old man! Let's drop it! Sorry you couldn't see your way to confide in us. Wouldn't have gone any further. Rather sick about the whole business--eh? No wonder! Money is the devil, anyway."

Somehow Leroy's words. .h.i.t Hughie harder than anything that had been said yet. He wavered. After all,--

"We've bought the hat, and I'm perfectly _ravenous_," announced Joan, appearing in the doorway. "And we've brought Mr. D'Arcy. Hughie, are those plover's eggs? Ooh!"

This was no atmosphere for the breathing of confidential secrets. The party resumed its usual demeanour of off-hand British _insouciance_, and began to gather round the luncheon-table. Only Mr. D'Arcy's right eyebrow asked a question of Mrs. Leroy, which was answered by a slight but regretful shrug of the shoulders.