“Partly a misunderstanding,” Jervaise said.  “No reason why he shouldn’t come back with me now if he wants to.”

“You would in that case explain, of course, how the misunderstanding arose?” I put in.

“I don’t know what your game is,” he returned allusively.

“I never had one,” I said.

“Looked infernally suspicious,” was his grudging answer.

The two girls exchanged a look of understanding, but I had no notion what they intended by it.  I had not learnt, then, how cleverly they played up to each other.

“Yes, but suspicious of what, Mr. Jervaise?” Anne said, taking up the cross-examination.

“Spying upon us,” Jervaise growled.

“Upon you or me?” asked Brenda.

“Both,” Jervaise said.

“But why?” asked Anne.

“Lord knows,” Jervaise replied.

I made no effort to interrupt them.  The two girls were clearing my character for me by the simple obvious method that I had not had the wit to adopt for myself.  I might have argued and protested for hours, and the only result would have been to confirm Jervaise’s suspicions.  Confronted by an innocent demand for explanation, he had not a leg to stand on.

Brenda’s eyebrows went up again, with that slightly bizarre, exotic air which was so arresting.  She spoke to me this time.

“And do you mean to say that they were all so horrid to you that you had to come away?” she asked.

“Precisely that,” I said.

“But you don’t tell us what Mr. Melhuish has done!” Anne persisted, continuing her cross-examination of Jervaise.

“Well, for one thing, he went out to meet your brother at three o’clock this morning,” he replied grudgingly.

“Didn’t come out to meet me,” Banks put in.  “We did meet all right, but it was the first time we’d ever seen each other.”

We all four looked at Jervaise, awaiting his next piece of evidence with the expectant air of children watching a conjurer.

He began to lose his temper.  “I can’t see that this has got anything to do with what we’re discussing...” he said, but I had no intention of letting him off too easily.  He had saved me the trouble of making tedious explanations, and my character had been cleared before Anne and Brenda, which two things were all that I really cared about in this connection; but I wanted, for other reasons, to make Jervaise appear foolish.  So I interrupted him by saying,—­

“Hadn’t you better tell them about Miss Tattersall?”

He turned on me, quite savagely.  “What the devil has this affair of ours got to do with you, Melhuish?” he asked.

“Nothing whatever,” I said.  “You dragged me into it in the first instance by bringing me up here last night, but since then I haven’t interfered one way or the other.  What does affect me, however, is that you and your family have—­well—­insulted me, and for that you do owe me, at least, an explanation.”