“I mean, I hear you have cut Wickersham out.  Ferdy thought he had a little corner there.”

Again Keith reddened.  He, too, had sometimes thought that Ferdy was beginning to be attentive to Lois Huntington.  Others manifestly thought so too.

“I don’t know that I understand you,” he said.

“Don’t you?” laughed the other.  “Haven’t you seen the papers lately?”

Keith chilled instantly.

“Norman Wentworth is my friend,” he said quietly.

“So they say is Mrs. Norm—­” began Mr. Trimmer, with a laugh.

Before he had quite pronounced the name, Keith leaned forward, his eyes levelled right into the other’s.

“Don’t say that, Trimmer.  I want to be friends with you,” he said earnestly.  “Don’t you ever couple my name with that lady’s.  Her husband is my friend, and any man that says I am paying her any attention other than such as her husband would have me pay her says what is false.”

“I know nothing about that,” said Tom, half surlily.  “I am only giving what others say.”

“Well, don’t you even do that.”  He rose to his feet, and stood very straight.  “Do me the favor to say to any one you may hear intimate such a lie that I will hold any man responsible who says it.”

“Jove!” said Mr. Trimmer, afterwards, to his friend Minturn, “must be some fire there.  He was as hot as pepper in a minute.  Wanted to fight any one who mentioned the matter.  He’ll have his hands full if he fights all who are talking about him and Ferdy’s old flame.  I heard half a roomful buzzing about it at Mrs. Nailor’s.  But it was none of my affair.  If he wants to fight about another man’s wife, let him.  It’s not the best way to stop the scandal.”

“You know, I think Ferdy is a little relieved to get out of that,” added Mr. Minturn.  “Ferdy wants money, and big money.  He can’t expect to get money there.  They say the chief cause of the trouble was Wentworth would not put up money enough for her.  He has got his eye on the Lancaster-Yorke combine, and he is all devotion to the widow now.”

“She won’t look at him.  She has too much sense.  Besides, she likes Keith,” said Stirling.

As Mr. Trimmer and his friend said, if Keith expected to silence all the tongues that were clacking with his name and affairs, he was likely to be disappointed.  There are some people to whose minds the distribution of scandal is as great a delight as the sweetest morsel is to the tongue.  Besides, there was one person who had a reason for spreading the report.  Ferdy Wickersham had returned and was doing his best to give it circulation.