I'm not doing THAT with half the town watching!

Judith Glover had this to say about a local guilty liaison in her book Birds in a Gilded Cage:

'Wife?' He lounged back against the wall and treated her to a nonchalant smile, one eyebrow half-raised in a practiced look of cynical humour.

'What on earth could have led you to think I have a wife?'

Sissy returned the look with equal practise.

'For a start, the way you scuttled off to meet me here on the sly. If you'd nothing to hide, why choose a hole-and-corner place like this - unless, of course, you don't want anyone seeing what you're up to?'

He took the shrewdly landed blow with all the expertise of an old hand at the game; and, with hardly a flicker to show she'd scored a point, answered blandly: 'My dear girl, when I make love to a woman I don't wish half of Lewes for an audience.'

'Oh don't give me that, Frank Bethway!' She threw back her head and laughed, showing a tip of pink tongue between the scarlet-carmined lips. 'I can smell a married man a mile away. You're like a lot of well fed toms after the cream.' Truth can be painful.