stolid Boy to go outside again]

HUNTINGDON. I've come to you, sir, as a gentleman----

MALISE. Some mistake. There is one, I believe, on the first floor.

HUNTINGDON. It's about my sister.

MALISE. D--n you! Don't you know that I've been shadowed these last
three months? Ask your detectives for any information you want.

HUNTINGDON. We know that you haven't seen her, or even known where
she is.

MALISE. Indeed! You've found that out? Brilliant!

HUNTINGDON. We know it from my sister.

MALISE. Oh! So you've tracked her down?

HUNTINGDON. Mrs. Fullarton came across her yesterday in one of those
big shops--selling gloves.

MALISE. Mrs. Fullarton the lady with the husband. Well! you've got
her. Clap her back into prison.

HUNTINGDON. We have not got her. She left at once, and we don't
know where she's gone.

MALISE. Bravo!

HUNTINGDON. [Taking hold of his bit] Look here, Mr. Malise, in a
way I share your feeling, but I'm fond of my sister, and it's
damnable to have to go back to India knowing she must be all adrift,
without protection, going through God knows what! Mrs. Fullarton
says she's looking awfully pale and down.

MALISE. [Struggling between resentment and sympathy] Why do you
come to me?

HUNTINGDON. We thought----

MALISE. Who?

HUNTINGDON. My--my father and myself.

MALISE. Go on.

HUNTINGDON. We thought there was just a chance that, having lost
that job, she might come to you again for advice. If she does, it
would be really generous of you if you'd put my father in touch with
her. He's getting old, and he feels this very much. [He hands
MALISE a card] This is his address.

MALISE. [Twisting the card] Let there be no mistake, sir; I do
nothing that will help give her back to her husband. She's out to
save her soul alive, and I don't join the hue and cry that's after
her. On the contrary--if I had the power. If your father wants to
shelter her, that's another matter. But she'd her own ideas about
that.

HUNTINGDON. Perhaps you don't realize how unfit my sister is for
rough and tumble. She's not one of this new sort of woman. She's
always been looked after, and had things done for her. Pluck she's
got, but that's all, and she's bound to come to grief.

MALISE. Very likely--the first birds do. But if she drops half-way
it's better than if she'd never flown. Your sister, sir, is trying
the wings of her spirit, out of the old slave market