But Lagune was remorseless and insisted she had betrayed him,
worse--made him ridiculous! Look at the "work" he had undertaken at
South Kensington--how could he go on with that now? How could he find
the heart? When his own typewriter sacrificed him to her stepfather's
trickery? "Trickery!"

The gesticulating hands became active, the grey eyes dilated with
indignation, the piping voice eloquent.

"If he hadn't cheated you, someone else would," was Ethel's inadequate
muttered retort, unheard by the seeker after phenomena.

It was perhaps not so bad as dismissal, but it certainly lasted
longer. And at home was Chaffery, grimly malignant at her failure to
secure that pneumatic glove. He had no right to blame her, he really
had not; but a disturbed temper is apt to falsify the scales of
justice. The tambourine, he insisted, he could have explained by
saying he put up his hand to catch it and protect his head directly
Smithers moved. But the pneumatic glove there was no explaining. He
had made a chance for her to secure it when he had pretended to
faint. It was rubbish to say anyone could have been looking on the
table then--rubbish.

Beside that significant wreck of a pen stood a little carriage clock
in a case, and this suddenly lifted a slender voice and announced
_five_. She turned round on her stool and sat staring at the
clock. She smiled with the corners of her mouth down. "Home," she
said, "and begin again. It's like battledore and shuttlecock....