"I know you want to tell me everything," she said, "and although the lady who is doing my hair does not understand a word of English as yet, you will probably be able to talk more freely if she is not present. If you will come back in five minutes she will have gone to Angela."
So the Judge went into his dressing-room and, finding his clothes already laid out, dressed and repaired again to his wife, not quite in five minutes, but in little more than ten.
"I suppose you have heard all about it from Nina?" he said, taking up the conversation where he had left it. "Have you seen this Lady George Dubec?"
"Yes," said Lady Birkett. "She is not in the least what Edward pictures her, according to Nina. As far as her looks tell one anything, I should say she was a charming woman."
"Edward paints her as a voluptuous siren of the ballet. I suppose one may put that down as one of his usual excursions of imagination."
"She certainly isn't that, and it was news to me that she had ever been on the stage. Poor Nina is very distressed about it. She says that they have had no word from Dick since he left the house, that Edward has only heard through Humphrey that he has sent in his papers, but even Humphrey doesn't know where he is or what he is doing."
"I had the same news from Edward, with the additions which might be expected of him. He takes it hard that after all he has done for Dick he should be treated in that way, and I don't know that I shouldn't take it hard in his place. It makes me increasingly thankful that I haven't any sons."
This was a polite little fiction on the Judge's part which his wife respected. It was the chief regret of his life that he had no son.
"Nina says he is fretting himself into a fever," said Lady Birkett, "lest Dick should be raising money on his expectations."
"Fretting himself into a fever," replied the Judge, "is not the expression I should use of Edward. But he certainly feels deep annoyance, and expresses it. He had not thought of that when he delivered his ultimatum, and, as he says, it would be the easiest possible thing for Dick to do. But I was mercifully able to relieve his mind on that point. I did not exactly tell him that Dick, although he has more brains in his little finger than his father has in his head, is so much like him that he would shrink from taking so sensible a step as much as Edward himself would; but I gave him the gist of it. My dear Emmeline, to men like Edward and Dick, land—landed property—is sacrosanct. Dick would give up any woman rather than embarrass an acre of Kencote. Kencote is his religion, just as much as it is Edward's. Edward gained comfort from my assuring him of the fact. He said that Dick was behaving so badly that right and wrong seemed to have no distinction for him for the time being, but probably there were crimes that he would not commit, and this might be one of them."