“There was nothing in that at all,” said Miss Norbury’s mother emphatically.  “Nothing.  I would say so to anybody.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon.  I never meant—­”

“Nothing.  I can say that for dear Angela with perfect confidence.  Whether he made advances—­” She broke off with a shrug of her plump shoulders.

Antony waited eagerly.

“Naturally they met.  Possibly he might have—­I don’t know.  But my duty as a mother was clear, Mr. Gillingham.”

Mr. Gillingham made an encouraging noise.

“I told him quite frankly that—­how shall I put it?—­that he was trespassing.  Tactfully, of course.  But frankly.”

“You mean,” said Antony, trying to speak calmly, “that you told him that—­er—­Mr. Ablett and your daughter—?”

Mrs. Norbury nodded several times.

“Exactly, Mr. Gillingham.  I had my duty as a mother.”

“I am sure, Mrs. Norbury, that nothing would keep you from doing your duty.  But it must have been disagreeable.  Particularly if you weren’t quite sure—­”

“He was attracted, Mr. Gillingham.  Obviously attracted.”

“Who would not be?” said Antony, with a charming smile.  “It must have been something of a shock to him to—­”

“It was just that which made me so glad that I had spoken.  I saw at once that I had not spoken a moment too soon.”

“There must have been a certain awkwardness about the next meeting,” suggested Antony.

“Naturally, he has not been here since.  No doubt they would have been bound to meet up at the Red House sooner or later.”

“Oh,—­this was only quite lately?”

“Last week, Mr. Gillingham.  I spoke just in time.”

“Ah!” said Antony, under his breath.  He had been waiting for it.

He would have liked now to have gone away, so that he might have thought over the new situation by himself; or, perhaps preferably, to have changed partners for a little while with Bill.  Miss Norbury would hardly be ready to confide in a stranger with the readiness of a mother, but he might have learnt something by listening to her.  For which of them had she the greater feeling, Cayley or Mark?  Was she really prepared to marry Mark?  Did she love him or the other—­or neither?  Mrs. Norbury was only a trustworthy witness in regard to her own actions and thoughts; he had learnt all that was necessary of those, and only the daughter now had anything left to tell him.  But Mrs. Norbury was still talking.

“Girls are so foolish, Mr. Gillingham,” she was saying.  “It is fortunate that they have mothers to guide them.  It was so obvious to me from the beginning that dear Mr. Ablett was just the husband for my little girl.  You never knew him?”

Antony said again that he had not seen Mr. Ablett.

“Such a gentleman.  So nice-looking, in his artistic way.  A regular Velasquez—­I should say Van Dyck.  Angela would have it that she could never marry a man with a beard.  As if that mattered, when—­” She broke off, and Antony finished her sentence for her.