Having carefully closed the door, she came and stood by the fire, and said in a low and almost awestruck voice:
“Hugo Blagdon was there, Tom. I was so surprised!”
Her husband put down his pipe, and stared at her stupidly.
“Why, what is surprising about him?”
“Oh, nothing, except that he is immensely struck with Letty; he as much as told me so.”
“Did he, indeed!” sitting erect. “I don’t think my little Letty would suit him at all.”
“You will allow, Tom, that he knows best; a man of his age has some idea of the sort of girl he admires by this time!”
“Humph!” he grunted, “I have never known him admire a girl yet—it’s always been the married women he runs after.”
“That run after him, you mean,” she corrected. “Well, I think he has made up his mind to settle at last.”
“I hope to goodness he hasn’t made up his mind to settle on my niece. For one thing, he is twenty years older than she is—if not more—a blasé fellow who has knocked about the world and been his own master (and, by all accounts, a bad one) since he was sixteen. Why the stories about him and Mrs. Corbett—scandalous stories—are common property.”