But Quinby did not vouchsafe an answer. "Hard luck, Sir John!" cried
he, as the judge missed an easy cannon, leaving his opponent a still
easier one, which lost him the game. I proceeded to press my question in
a somewhat stronger form, though still with all the suavity at my
command.

"Surely," I urged, "you must have written to ask him about her first?"

"That's my business, I fancy," said Quinby, with a peculiarly aggressive
specimen of the nasal snigger of which enough was made in a previous
chapter, but of which Quinby himself never tired.

"Quite," I agreed; "but do you also consider it your business to inquire
deliberately into the past life of a lady whom I believe you only know
by sight, and to spread the result of your inquiries broadcast in the
hotel? Is that your idea of chivalry? I shall ask Sir John Sankey
whether it is his," I added, as the judge joined us with genial
condescension, and I recollected that his proverbial harshness toward
the male offender was redeemed by an extraordinary sympathy with the
women. Thereupon I laid a general case before Sir John, asking him
point-blank whether he considered such conduct as Quinby's (but I did
not say whose the conduct was) either justifiable in itself or conducive
to the enjoyment of a holiday community like ours.

"It depends," said the judge, cocking a critical eye on the now furious
Quinby. "I am afraid we most of us enjoy our scandal, and for my part I
always like to see a humbug catch it hot. But if the scandal's about a
woman, and if it's an old scandal, and if she's a lonely woman, that
quite alters the case, and in my opinion the author of it deserves all
he gets."

At this Quinby burst out, with an unrestrained heat that did not lower
him in my estimation, though the whole of his tirade was directed
exclusively against me. I had been talking "at" him, he declared. I
might as well have been straightforward while I was about it. He, for
his part, was not afraid to take the responsibility for anything he
might have said. It was perfectly true, to begin with. The so-called
Mrs. Lascelles, who was such a friend of mine, had been the wife of a
German Jew in Lahore, who had divorced her on her elopement with a
Major Lascelles, whom she had left in his turn, and whose name she had
not the smallest right to bear. Quinby exercised some restraint in the
utterances of these calumnies, or the whole room must have heard them,
but even as it was we had more