“I did him a little service in the past—an affair of bearer bonds. And once, when I was in Paris for a royal visit, I had Mademoiselle Flossie pointed out to me. La jolie petite pensionnaire! She had the jolie dot too! It caused trouble. She nearly made a bad affair.”
“How was that?”
“A certain Count de la Rochefour. Un bien mauvais sujet! A bad hat, as you would say. An adventurer pure and simple, who knew how to appeal to a romantic young girl. Luckily her father got wind of it in time. He took her back to America in haste. I heard of her marriage some years later, but I know nothing of her husband.”
“H’m,” I said. “The Honorable Rupert Carrington is no beauty, by all accounts. He’d pretty well run through his own money on the turf, and I should imagine old man Halliday’s dollars came along in the nick of time. I should say that for a good-looking, well-mannered, utterly unscrupulous young scoundrel, it would be hard to find his match!”
“Ah, the poor little lady! Elle n’est pas bien tombée!”
“I fancy he made it pretty obvious at once that it was her money, and not she, that had attracted him. I believe they drifted apart almost at once. I have heard rumors lately that there was to be a definite legal separation.”
“Old man Halliday is no fool. He would tie up her money pretty tight.”
“I dare say. Anyway, I know as a fact that the Honorable Rupert is said to be extremely hard up.”
“Ah-ha! I wonder—”
“You wonder what?”