"As a matter of fact," she said, correcting herself for the fourth time, "I am not so much indisposed as angry."
"Not with me, I hope?" exclaimed the baronet.
As he proceeded to chuckle asthmatically over the fantastic improbability of this suggestion, the elderly matron with marked irritation called him sharply to order. "Have you read the papers?" she demanded.
"'Ave I read the papers?" he repeated. "Of course I've read the papers."
Occasionally, very occasionally, particularly after periods of much autogenous mirth, Sir Joseph Bullion dropped an H. But he never noticed it. It was a sort of unconscious reverberation of former days; as if his lowly past, especially that portion of it which had been spent with the first and ungrammatical Mrs. Bullion, insisted on revealing itself to the world, to be acknowledged and congratulated on what it had achieved.
"Well then," pursued the widow firmly, "you know about Lord Henry!"
"Lord Henry?" he cried. "What about Lord Henry?"
Mrs. Delarayne began to examine her rings very studiously, as if she wished to make quite certain that none of the stones had gone astray in the last five minutes. "It's all very well, Joseph," she observed quietly; "but if Lord Henry goes—I go. Now understand that once and for all. I can't endure London without him."
"Not really?" he ejaculated, leaning forward. "Are you serious? D'you mean Lord Henry, the biologist or something?"
Mrs. Delarayne continued the close scrutiny of her rings.