Her cheeks grew crimson, and she drew herself up haughtily.
"Yes," Barnstable replied, looking confused. "That is, of course, she that was my wife."
"I should never have believed," May observed distantly, "that 'Love in a Cloud' could have been written by a widower."
Barnstable began to regard her as if he were in doubt whether she or he himself had lost all trace of reason.
"'Love in a Cloud,'" he repeated, "'Love in a Cloud'? Do you know who wrote that beastly book?"
Her color shot up, and the angry young goddess declared itself in every line of her face. Her pose became instantly a protest.
"How dare you speak of that lovely book in that way?" she demanded. "It is perfectly exquisite!"
"But who wrote it?" he demanded in his turn, growing so red as to suggest awful possibilities of apoplexy.
"Didn't you?" she stammered. "Are you running it down just for modesty?"
"I! I! I write 'Love in a Cloud'?" cried Barnstable, speaking so loud that he could be heard all over the room. "You insult me, Miss--Miss Calthump! You--"
His feelings were evidently too much for him. He turned with rude abruptness, and looking about him, seemed to become aware that the eyes of almost everybody in the room were fixed on him. He cast a despairing glance to where Mrs. Harbinger and Mrs. Croydon were for the moment standing together, and then started in miserable flight toward the door. At the threshold he encountered Graham the butler, who presented him with a handful of letters.
"Will you please give the letters to Mrs. Harbinger?" Graham said, and vanished.
Barnstable looked after the butler, looked at the letters, looked around as if his head were swimming, and then turned back into the drawing-room. He walked up to the hostess, and held out the letters in silence, his fluffy face a pathetic spectacle of embarrassed woe.
He shook his head, as if he had given up all hope of understanding anything.
"The butler put them in my hands," he murmured.
"Upon my word, Mrs. Harbinger," spoke up Mrs. Croydon, seeming more offended than there was any apparent reason for her to be, "you have the most extraordinary butler that ever existed."
Mrs. Harbinger threw out her hands in a gesture by which she evidently disclaimed all responsibility for Graham and his doings.