"No, nobody told me. I've been away, you see." He paused a moment. "Rather sudden, wasn't it?"
"Well, when a stone once begins to roll down hill—!" said Joe, with a knowing grin. "Besides he'd been very useful to them over Raymond. The old man took no end of a fancy to him. I imagine it all somehow worked in together. Funny she didn't write and tell you about it!"
Arthur felt that his companion was regarding him with some curiosity; the friendship between Marie Sarradet and himself had been so well known in the circle; whether it would become anything more had doubtless been a matter of speculation among them. He did not mind Joe's curiosity; better that it should be turned on this matter than on his more recent experiences.
"I suppose she had something considerably more pressing to think about," he remarked with a smile.
Yet the news caused not indeed resentment or jealousy, but a vague annoyance, based partly on vanity—the engagement was sudden, the deeper memories of another attachment must have faded quickly—but mainly on regret for Marie. He could not help feeling that she was throwing herself away on a partner beneath her, unworthy of her—from family reasons in some measure probably, or just for want of anybody better. The Marie he had known—that side of her which her shrewd and affectionate diplomacy had always contrived to present to the eyes whose scrutiny she feared—the Marie whom once he had marked for his—surely she could not easily mate with Sidney Barslow, for all the good there was in him? He forgot that there might be another Marie whom he did not know so well, perhaps in the end a more real, a more natural, a preponderating one. He should not have forgotten that possibility, since there had proved to be more than one Bernadette!
"Well, I hope they'll be very happy. I must go and see her when I'm back in town."
"They'll do all right," Joe pronounced. "Sidney has taken a reef in—several, in fact. He'll have a big chance at old Sarradet's place and, if I know him, he'll use it."
"And how's Raymond going on?"
"Raymond's on appro., so to speak, both as to the business and in another quarter, I think. Our pretty Amabel is waiting to see how he sticks to the blue ribbon of a blameless life. The old set's rather gone to pot, hasn't it, Arthur? The way of the world, what?"
"By Jove, it is!" sighed Arthur. Things had a way of going to pot—with a vengeance.