Signor Stefani continued to talk, but so rapidly and loudly now that Peter couldn’t follow him.  He merely shook his head and opened the door, saying, “This way, please.  I can’t understand you when you talk so fast.”

Signor Stefani, with a final angry shrug and expectoration, permitted himself to be ushered out of the room.

On the stairs outside they met Vyvian coming up, who nodded affably to both of them.  Signor Stefani, as he passed, shrugged his shoulders up to his ears and spread his two hands wide, with a look of resigned despair over his shoulder at Peter, and Vyvian’s brows went up at the gesture.  Peter ushered his guest out at the street entrance.  Signor Stefani’s last words were, “I shall return shortly and see your brother in person.  I have made a foolish mistake in thinking that you were in his confidence.  Good evening.”

So they parted, more in sorrow than in anger.

Peter met Vyvian again on the stairs.  He was passing on, but Vyvian stopped and said, “What have you been doing to Stefani to put him out so?”

Peter stopped and looked at him for a moment.  He felt rather dazed, as if someone had hit him a blow on the head.  He had to remember what was this funny bounder’s place in the newly-revealed scheme of things.  Not merely a funny bounder after all, it seemed, but just what Cheriton had called him.  But one couldn’t let him know that one thought so; one was ostensibly on Hilary’s side, against honesty, against decency, against all the world.

So Peter, having located Vyvian and himself in this matter, said nothing at all, but went on upstairs.

Vyvian, staring after him in astonishment (none of Hilary’s boarders had seen Peter discourteous before), raised his eyebrows again, and whistled beneath his breath.

“So we’re too fine for our brother’s dirty jobs!  I’m dashed if I don’t believe it’s that!”

Peter went upstairs rather too quickly for his heart.  He returned to the saloon and collapsed suddenly into a chair, feeling giddy.  Mrs. Johnson came in a moment later and found him leaning back with closed eyes.  She was disturbed about his complexion.

“The colour of putty, poor Mr. Peter!  You’ve bin excitin’ yourself, tearin’ about sight-seein’, I know.  Tell me now just how you feel.  I’m blest if I don’t believe you’ve a-bin in the Cathedral, smellin’ at that there choky incense!  It takes me like that, always; and Miss Gould says she’s just the same.  Funny feelin’s within, haven’t you now?”

“Yes,” said Peter, “just exactly that”; and they so overcame him that he began to laugh helplessly.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Johnson,” he said presently.  “I’m an ass.  But I’m all right now.  I came upstairs in a hurry, that’s all.  And before that a man talked so loud and so fast that it took my breath away.  It may be silly, but I am like that, as Miss Barnett says.  My brother and sister-in-law are both out, aren’t they?”