"Don't talk nonsense! Leave Mr. Mountjoy to me."

"Do _you_ take his part? I can tell you this. If I drank too much of
that poisonous French stuff, Mountjoy set me the example. He was
tipsy--as you call it--shamefully tipsy, I give you my word of honour.
What's the matter now?"

His wife (so impenetrably cool, thus far) had suddenly become excited.
There was not the smallest fragment of truth in what he had just said
of Hugh, and Mrs. Vimpany was not for a moment deceived by it. But the
lie had, accidentally, one merit--it suggested to her the idea which
she had vainly tried to find over her cup of tea. "Suppose I show you
how you may be revenged on Mr. Mountjoy," she said.

"Well?"

"Will you remember what I asked you to do for me, if Lord Harry takes
us by surprise?"

He produced his pocket-diary, and told her to make a memorandum of it.
She wrote as briefly as if she had been writing a telegram: "Keep Lord
Harry from seeing Miss Henley, till I have seen her first."

"Now," she said, taking a chair by the bedside, "you shall know what a
clever wife you have got. Listen to me."

CHAPTER VIII

HER FATHER'S MESSAGE