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All these things, and a good many more, had been said. Eames knew it.
Kind friends had seen to that.
To contrive such stories was a certain lady's method of asserting her
personality on the island. She seldom went into society owing to some
physical defect in her structure; she could only sit at home, like
Penelope, weaving these and other bright tapestries--odds and ends of
servants' gossip, patched together by the virulent industry of her own
disordered imagination. It consoled Mr. Eames slightly to reflect that
he was not the only resident singled out for such aspersions; that the
more harmless a man's life, the more fearsome the legends. He suffered,
none the less. This was why he seldom entered the premises of the Alpha
and Omega Club where, quite apart from his objection to Parker's poison
and the loose and rowdy talk of the place, he was liable to encounter
the lady's stepbrother. Of course he knew perfectly well what he ought
to have done. He ought to have imitated the example of other people who
behaved like scoundrels and openly gloried in it.


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