There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom I had spoken gazed from the window at the rainy twilight. Her silence, I am persuaded, was not intended to rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she was merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke, there was in her tone something of gentleness.
"The name," she said, "is Beaufoy--B-e-a-u-f-o-y. It is of Huguenot origin."
Passionately I wished for an earthquake--one that might cause the floor to open beneath me, or the roof to fall through and blot me from her sight. How to get away?--that was my one thought. To cover my embarrassment, I tried to make small-talk about a medallion of an Emperor of France, which hung upon the paneling. The lady said it had been given to an ancestor of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That, for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse. I wished I had not dragged the Emperor into the conversation.
"It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going."
Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I remember not a detail, save that, as we departed, I knew that we should never see this lady again; that for her I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I had dragged my companion with me. The next thing I definitely recollect is walking swiftly up Meeting Street beside him, in the rain and darkness of late afternoon. All the way back to the hotel we strode side by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our rooms.
Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one sleeve-vent, above the cuff.
"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!"
"I don't always," I answered apologetically.
"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: "Do you remember where we are to be taken to-morrow?"
"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell Pringle."
