"Early this year. I consulted him on a matter of business. I have no private acquaintance with him." Dick was looking straight at Saltash with a certain hardness of contempt in his face. "You evidently are on terms of intimacy with him."
"Oh, quite!" said Saltash readily. "He knows me--almost as well as you do. And I know him--even better. I was saying to _Juliette_ just now that I believe he shares the general impression that I have got Lady Jo Farringmore somewhere up my sleeve. She did the rabbit trick, you know, a week or two before the wedding, and because I was to have been the best man I somehow got the blame. Wonder if he'd have blamed you if you'd been there!"
"Not disreputable enough?" laughed Saltash.
"Not nearly," said Juliet, coming out of her silence. "Dick has rather strong opinions on this subject, Charles, so please don't be flippant about it! Will you give me another match?"
He held one for her, his eyebrows cocked at a comical angle, open derision in the odd eyes beneath them. Then, her cigarette kindled, he sprang up in his abrupt fashion.
"I'm going. Thanks for putting up with me for so long. I had to come and see you, Juliette. You are one of the very few capable of appreciating me at my full value."
He bowed low over her hand. "If I can ever serve you in any way," he said, "I hope you will give me the privilege. Farewell, most estimable Romeo! You may yet live to greet me as a friend."
He was gone with the words with the suddenness of a monkey swinging off a bough, leaving behind him a silence so marked that the fall of an unripe apple from the tree immediately above them caused Columbus to start and jump from his perch to investigate.
Then Juliet, very quiet of mien and level of brow, got up and went to Dick who had risen at the departure of the visitor. She put her hand through his arm and held it closely.
"You are not to be unkind to my friends, Richard," she said. "It is the one thing I can't allow."
He looked at her with some sternness, but his free hand closed at once upon hers. "I hate to think of you on terms of intimacy with that bounder," he said.
She smiled a little. "I know you do. But you are prejudiced. I can't give up an old friend--even for you, Dick."