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‘You forget yourself, Clive.’ She tried to speak quietly; she was right and Clive wrong; she had the advantage and she must speak quietly. ‘Your solicitude for your wife makes you forget yourself. I cannot consent to have my friendships proscribed by you and Hester.’

‘Your friendships? Why, you don’t know the man! You saw him for the first time the other day!’

‘What is that to you, if it was so? One may like a person very much in a day. I have met Captain Ingpen three times and feel him almost a friend.’ ‘So I see. So I saw the other night. Please remember, then, that he isn’t our friend and don’t discuss Hester with him — as I gather you have been doing.’

‘Very well, Clive; very well. All I have to say, then, is this— and then I will ask you to go:—I have not discussed Hester with him. Hester insulted me in his presence and I saw that he felt it an insult.—But he said not a word against her. It was I who said, to explain, to exculpate—that she had lost her temper:—that is all. I insist on your understanding what passed between me and Captain Ingpen. I have not discussed Hester with him.’

‘Very well. Have it as you wish. I will go.’

‘One moment more.—Since you and Hester