“Only by name.  I imagined that he was your spectre, when you spoke of Harley Street.  Does he send you South again?”

“No,” said Rainham shortly; “he thinks it would be inexpedient—­that was his phrase, inexpedient—­in an hotel, you know, and all that....  I was obliged to him, because in any case it would have been inconvenient to me to be abroad this year.  I suppose, though, that if it would have done me any good I should have gone; but I have a great deal to arrange.”

He went on composedly to tell her of the most important of these arrangements—­the disposal of his business.  He had systematically neglected it for years, he explained, and it had ended by going to the dogs.  So long as his foreman was there, that had not mattered so much; but Bullen had decided to desert him, and very wisely.  He had accepted an offer to manage the works of a firm of North-Country shipbuilders; he was to shake the dust of Blackpool from off his feet in a very few months, and would probably make his fortune.  And as he himself was not equal to bearing his incubus alone, he had put it in the market.  A brand new company had bought it—­that is to say, they had made him an offer—­a ridiculously inadequate one, he was told, but which he was determined to accept; at any rate, it would leave him enough, when everything was paid, to live upon, for the rest of his life.  The legal preliminaries were now being settled:  they appeared to be interminable; but as in the meantime the dock-gates were shut, and the clerks had departed, he could not, so far as he saw, be losing money; that was a consolation.

He had not come to the end of his disquisition before he discovered that he spoke to deaf ears.  The old lady for once was inattentive:  she had sat screening her face from the fire with a large palm fan while he unburdened himself, and she began now with a certain hesitation: 

“My pretext, Philip!  When I said that I made it for you it was only half true.  In effect, my dear, I had something to tell you—­something disagreeable.”

“Concerning me?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she said—­“something I have heard.”

He looked vaguely across at her, finding her obscurity a little strained, waiting for her to speak.  The silence that intervened was beginning to harass him, when she said suddenly: 

“I will be quite plain.  I think you ought to know.  There is a scandal abroad about you—­about you and some woman.”

“Some woman!” he repeated blankly.  “What woman?” He leant back in his chair, laughing his pleasant, low laugh.  “I am sorry,” he said, “I can’t be as seriously annoyed as I ought; it is too foolish.  My conscience really does not help me to discover her—­this woman.  Do you know any more?”

She shook her head.

“It is not a nice story,” she said.  “No, I have heard no name; only the story is current.  I have heard it from three sources.  I thought you had better know of it.”