"She—she—she," said Irene Bowdon, as she rose in answer to her hostess' signal.
"Well, yes, she has," Ashley admitted, as he drew back the chairs. And while she was still in earshot he added, "But it's all over now."
"Indeed it isn't, it never will be," said Irene over her shoulder, as she swept away.
"How ready people are with these eternal negatives," he thought as he sat down to his glass of wine.
Then he fell to speculating why Bowdon had told her about Jack Fenning and the thousand pounds, and why she had revealed that Bowdon had told her. To him the second question seemed the more difficult to answer, but he found an explanation, partly in her desire to defend or apologise for a certain bitterness towards Ora which she had betrayed, more perhaps in the simple fact that she was brimming over with the thing and could not restrain herself in the presence of one to whom her disclosure would be so interesting and significant. She had been tempted to show him that she knew more of the situation than he supposed, and must not be treated as an outsider when Ora and her affairs came up for discussion. Anyhow there the disclosure was, with its proof that, even although the eternal negative might be rashly asserted, for the time at all events Ora had very materially affected other lives than his own.
"Of course I never expected to be where I am; at any rate not till much later."
Bertie Jewett was talking to Bowdon about his success and his new position; he talked unaffectedly enough, although perhaps it could hardly be said that he talked modestly. Perceiving that his remark had roused Ashley to attention, he went on, "Among other things, I've got to thank your dislike of a commercial life, Mead. That let me in, you see."
"Come, Ashley," laughed Bowdon, "here's something to your credit!"
"Really the exact train of circumstances that has resulted in putting me practically at the head of the concern is rather curious to consider," pursued Bertie. Bowdon listened with a tolerant, Ashley with a malicious smile. "It all seemed to be made so easy for me. I had only to wait, and all the difficulties cleared out of the way. I can talk of it because I had nothing to do with it, except taking what I was offered, I mean."
"Well, everybody's not equal to that, by any means," said Bowdon. "But certainly fortune's treated you well."