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It was all French to me, but cook was drinking in every word, and when she returned from taking them in their coffee she made no bones about it, but took up her place at the door with her ear to the keyhole.

It was Mr. Quincey who got them all quiet, and then he began to explain things. It seemed that if they could only find a certain gentleman and persuade him to come forward and acknowledge that he began a row, that then all would be well. Mr. Quincey would be fined forty shillings, and Mr. Parable’s name would never appear. Failing that, Mr. Parable, according to Mr. Quincey, could do his fourteen days himself.

“I’ve told you once,” says Mr. Parable, “and I tell you again, that I don’t know the man’s name, and can’t give it you.”

“We are not asking you to,” says Mr. Quincey. “You give us the name of your tango partner, and we’ll do the rest.”

I could see cook’s face; I had got a bit interested myself, and we were both close to the door. She hardly seemed to be breathing.

“I am sorry,” says Mr. Parable, speaking very deliberate-like, “but I am not going to have her name dragged into this business.”

“It wouldn’t be,” says Mr. Quincey. “All we want to get out of her is the name and address of the gentleman who was so anxious to see her home.”

“Who was he?” says Miss Bulstrode. “Her husband?”

“No,” says Mr. Parable; “he wasn’t.”

“Then who was he?” says Miss Bulstrode. “He must have been something to her–fiance?”

“I am going to do the fourteen days myself,” says Mr. Parable. “I shall come out all the fresher after a fortnight’s complete rest and change.”

Cook leaves the door with a smile on her face that made her look quite beautiful, and, taking some paper from the dresser drawer, began to write a letter.

They went on talking in the other room for another ten minutes, and then Mr. Parable lets them out himself, and goes a little way with them. When he came back we could hear him walking up and down the other room.

She had written and stamped the envelope; it was lying on the table.

“‘Joseph Onions, Esq.,'” I says, reading the address. “‘Auctioneer and House Agent, Broadway, Hammersmith.’ Is that the young man?”

“That is the young man,” she says, folding her letter and putting it in the envelope.

“And was he your fiance?” I asked.

“No,” she says. “But he will be if he does what I’m telling him to do.”

“And what about Mr. Parable?” I says.

“A little joke that will amuse him later on,” she says, slipping a cloak on her shoulders. “How once he nearly married his cook.”

“I shan’t be a minute,” she says. And, with the letter in her hand, she slips out.

Mrs. Meadows, we understand, has expressed indignation at our publication of this interview, she being under the impression that she was simply having a friendly gossip with a neighbour. Our representative, however, is sure he explained to Mrs. Meadows that his visit was official; and, in any case, our duty to the public must be held to exonerate us from all blame in the matter.

* * *

Mr. Joseph Onions, of the Broadway, Hammersmith, auctioneer and house agent, expressed himself to our representative as most surprised at the turn that events had subsequently taken. The letter that Mr. Onions received from Miss Comfort Price was explicit and definite. It was to the effect that if he would call upon a certain Mr. Quincey, of Harcourt Buildings, Temple, and acknowledge that it was he who began the row at the Earl’s Court Exhibition on the evening of the twenty-seventh, that then the engagement between himself and Miss Price, hitherto unacknowledged by the lady, might be regarded as a fact.