When Cassy had gone, Jones went back to his rooms. He went absently, his
mind not on her story, which was old as the Palisades, but on a
situation, entirely new, which it had suggested.
"Nice girl," he remarked as he re-entered the workshop. "Suppose we go
and have dinner."
Sombrely Lennox looked up. At the table where he sat, he had been
fingering some papers. He threw them down.
"I am going to have a word with Paliser."
Jones cocked an eye at him. "See here, you are not a knight-errant. The
age of chivalry is over." The novelist paused and exclaimed: "What am I
saying! The age of chivalry is not over. It can't be. Last night,
Verelst dined with a monster!"
Lennox pushed at the papers. "If I were alone concerned, I would thank
Paliser. He has done me a good turn. He has set me straight."
Then, to the listening novelist, who later found the story very useful,
Lennox repeated Cassy's version of the rhyme and reason of the broken
engagement.
The tale of it concluded, Lennox flicked at a speck. "I am grateful to
Paliser for that, but for the manner in which he treated her, I shall
have a word with him. Just one."
Jones sat down. "A word, eh? Well, why not? Flipping a man in the face
with a glove was fashionable in the days of Charles II. Tweaking the
nose was Georgian. The horsewhip went out with Victoria. Posting your
man was always rather coffee-house and a rough-and-tumble very hooligan.
If I were you, which I am not, but if I were, I would adopt
contemporaneous methods. To-day we just sit about and backbite. That is
progress. Let me commend it to you."
With a wide movement, Lennox swept the papers, shoved them into a pocket
and stood up.
Jones also stood up. "Got an appetite? Well, dining has the great
disadvantage of taking it away. Come along."