"No one knows that better than I do. I assure you I'm not a bit prejudiced. I quite believe and realise that people can have a good time anywhere. Why, even in provincial towns—what was that case at Bradford, that astonished everybody so much? However, my point is, that Mrs. Tregelly doesn't."
"Why? I think she looks very happy," said Felicity.
"Yes. Exactly. Happy, but perfectly calm. A woman placed as she is could not possibly look as calm as that if she had a secret purple romance with Chetwode, or with any other man. It just shows—if I may say so—how blind Love is. If this had happened to anybody else, you would be the first to see, on the face of it, that anything like a flirtation between the Lady of the Velvet Case and your husband is one of those hopeless impossibilities that only the wildly imaginative and charming people who have no relation to real life, like yourself, could possibly conceive."
Felicity seemed comforted.
"You think it utterly impossible?"
"Oh, I go further than that. I think it highly improbable. Can you see," continued Wilton, "this gentle, harmless creature, a woman capable of having her portrait painted on porcelain, from a photograph, and framed in crimson velvet, who never in her life had a secret except when she concealed from her husband her real reason for sending the housemaid away in order to give the girl another chance by giving her a good character—can you see her, I say, privately slipping this enormous case into Chetwode's small and reluctant white hand just as she was going to church, and saying, 'Keep it for my sake'?"
"You make the whole thing so ridiculous, Bertie, I begin to think you're right, but still it's very extraordinary that he did have it."
"Our not knowing the reason is not nearly so extraordinary as your explanation."
"But I can't wait for the real explanation. Suspense is torture," she said.
"But delightful—or there'd be no gambling in the world. Still, if you dislike it, why not telegraph?" Wilton suggested.