Mr. Hazlewood raised remonstrating hands.

“There!  You are like the rest, Richard.  You take the worst view.  Here is a good woman maligned and slandered.  There is nothing against her.  She was acquitted in open trial by a jury of responsible citizens under a judge of the Highest Court in India.  Yet she is left alone—­like a leper.  She is the victim of gossip and such gossip.  Richard,” said the old man solemnly, “for uncharitableness, ill-nature and stupid malice the gossip of a Sussex village leaves the most deplorable efforts of Voltaire and Swift entirely behind.”

“Father, you are going it,” said Dick with a chuckle.  “Do you mean to give me a step-mother?”

“I do not, Richard.  Such a monstrous idea never entered my thoughts.  But, my boy, I have called upon her.”

“Oh, you have!”

“Yes.  I have seen her too.  I left a card.  She left one upon me.  I called again.  I was fortunate.”

“She was in?”

“She gave me tea, Richard.”

Richard cocked his head on one side.

“What’s she like, father?  Topping?”

“Richard, she gave me tea,” said the old man, dwelling insistently upon his repetition.

“So you said, sir, and it was most kind of her to be sure.  But that fact won’t help me to form even the vaguest picture of her looks.”

“But it will, Richard,” Mr. Hazlewood protested with a nervousness which set Dick wondering again.  “She gave me tea.  Therefore, don’t you see, I must return the hospitality, which I do with the utmost eagerness.  Richard, I look to you to help me.  We must champion that slandered lady.  You will see her for yourself.  She is coming here to luncheon.”

The truth was out at last.  Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily have guessed it.  This was just the quixotic line his father could have been foreseen to take.

“Well, we must just keep our eyes open and see that she doesn’t slip anything into the decanters while our heads are turned,” said Dick with a chuckle.  Old Mr. Hazlewood laid a hand upon his son’s shoulder.

“That’s the sort of thing they say.  Only you don’t mean it, Richard, and they do,” he remarked with a mild and reproachful shake of the head.  “Ah, some day, my boy, your better nature will awaken.”

Dick expressed no anxiety for the quick advent of that day.

“How many are there of us to be at luncheon?” asked Dick.

“Only the two of us.”

“I see.  We are to keep the danger in the family.  Very wise, sir, upon my word.”

“Richard, you pervert my meaning,” said Mr. Hazlewood.  “The neighbourhood has not been kind to Mrs. Ballantyne.  She has been made to suffer.  The Vicar’s wife, for instance—­a most uncharitable person.  And my sister, your Aunt Margaret, too, in Great Beeding—­she is what you would call—­”

“Hot stuff,” murmured Dick.

“Quite so,” replied Mr. Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look of keen interest upon his face.  “I am not familiar with the phrase, Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into very few words.”