“Well, I don’t know that I personally should care to conduct my courtship in an atmosphere of test-tubes, litmus-paper, and dead rabbits, but there’s no accounting for tastes. A dead rabbit, I feel convinced, would put me off my stroke altogether.”
“Roger, you’re disgusting. Well, is there anything else you want to ask me?”
“Not at the moment. I’ll wait for one of your more helpful days. Does that mean, by the way, that ‘Good-morning, Mr. Sheringham. It’s been so nice to see you. You must come again some day’? Because if so, I warn you that Anthony comes with me.”
“Roger, I think you’re being perfectly horrid this morning,” exclaimed Miss Cross, blushing warmly.
“Shall I chuck him over the cliff for you, Margaret?” suggested Anthony, no less moist.
“It doesn’t mean anything of the sort,” Margaret went on, disregarding this admirable offer. “I was simply going to say that if you don’t want to discuss things with me any more, I wish you’d show me the little cave where Elsie and Colin used to meet. It sounds most thrilling.”
“What I deplore most of all in the young women of to-day,” remarked Roger sadly, as he rose with reluctance to his feet, “is the unpleasing morbidity of their tastes.”
As they walked abreast along the top of the cliff, Roger’s thoughts were busy round a certain point. Margaret’s reference to her dead cousin as Dr. Vane’s wife tended to show that Anthony had not told her that the two were probably not legally married. Roger was glad of this; he had meant to warn Anthony that morning to say nothing to the girl on this delicate matter, but it had slipped his memory. Until the matter was settled one way or the other, either by the discovery of the living Herbert Peters or by the establishment of his death prior to Mrs. Vane’s marriage to the doctor, it was much better to leave the girl in ignorance of the issues involved. For (and this was the point which was really worrying Roger) if Mrs. Vane’s second marriage turned out to be a bigamous one, would that not mean that the settlement was invalidated and Margaret’s legacy vanished into thin air? Without knowing the exact terms of the document it was impossible to say, but Roger meant to go into the matter with a solicitor on Margaret’s behalf at the earliest possible moment.
His attention was recalled to the present moment with a jerk. “I can’t tell you how thankful I was to hear of this new theory of yours, Roger,” Margaret was saying with an effort of lightness. “It’s such a change from—well, from the way things seem to have been heading. And you really think you’ll be able to substantiate it?”
“I’m quite sure I shall, my dear,” Roger replied, perhaps with more confidence than he actually felt at the moment. “I’ve what is termed, I understand, a hunch about it. Don’t you worry any more; Uncle Roger is going to see you through this and get to the bottom of it for you.”