"How could I tell, Straker, how could I possibly tell?"
And Straker, remembering the dance that Philippa had led him, and her appearance, and the things, the uncommonly queer things she had done to him with her eyes, wondered how Furny _could_ have told, how he could have avoided drawing the inferences, the uncommonly queer inferences, he drew. He'd have drawn them himself if he had not known Philippa so well.
"What I want to know," said Furnival, "is what she did it for?"
"No, she didn't. She said it wasn't necessary. _That_ was innocent, Straker, if you like."
"But I'm going all the same. I'm going before breakfast, by the seven-fifty train."
That was far and away the most disconcerting thing that had happened at Amberley within Straker's recollection.
It must have been very disagreeable for Philippa.
When, five days ago, he had wondered if he would ever live to see Philippa disconcerted, he had not contemplated anything like this. Neither, he was inclined to think, had Philippa in the beginning. She could have had no idea what she was letting herself in for. That she had let herself in was, to Straker's mind, the awful part of it.
As he walked home from the station he called up all his cleverness, all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her disconcerted.
The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming down the walk.
He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.
He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his tact.
He tried to look as if he hadn't been to see Furnival off at the station, as if the beauty of the morning sufficiently accounted for his appearance at that early hour. The hour, indeed, was so disgustingly early that he would have half an hour to put through with Philippa before breakfast.
But Miss Tarrant ignored the beauty of the morning.
"What have you done," she said, "with Mr. Furnival?"