It isn't what it looks like may have been true, but it wasn't a very good excuse. All very well for Ford to think so, of course, when he had come up with nothing better. In the time it had taken her to answer he had done nothing beyond mutely opening and closing his mouth. Still, it could not escape his notice that the young woman (he recognized her, definitely, but what was her name? He'd danced with her before, he thought vaguely — a recollection that did nothing to help their current situation, so it was easy to focus his mental efforts elsewhere for the moment) had not actually offered any answer to the question the Minister's wife had posed. What were they doing away from the ball? She didn't want to make a scene, but she didn't say what she might have done in the ballroom that would otherwise have made a scene, and this did not explain at all how Ford had gotten there.

"I just — Just —" Ford began weakly, but he couldn't figure out what to say from there. He'd just found her like this — there was really nothing else to say about it. But he didn't think Mrs. Dempsey would believe that, and if she did then — he still didn't know how Miss Forgot-Her-Name had gotten that way, but suspected it was probably nothing she wanted to share with the Minister's wife, so he'd be throwing her under the carriage wheels a bit by saying it, wouldn't he?

This was all far too much for him.

"— just trying to help with her dress but I didn't really know what I was doing anyway and I'm sure you don't need my help with it anymore so I think I ought to just go back —" he said all in a rush. "— and leave you two to, uh, whatever the issue with the dress was and I'll just — just get back to things and get out of your way —"

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