“Isn’t it?” she said ingenuously. “It often amuses me too. I did it for a freak—and—a reason.”
“But why ‘Fenham’? You haven’t really married any—er—fool of that name?”
“Not a bit. Thanks for the implied compliment all the same. The name did as well as any other. That’s all.”
“What has become of Spence?”
“I don’t know, and don’t care. He turned out rather a cur,” she answered with a light laugh, showing no more confusion or restraint in alluding to the circumstance, than he had done when first she broached the subject of their parting. “I had more than enough of him in three months, and couldn’t stand the sight of him in five. He had just succeeded to a lot of money, you know, and became afflicted with swelled head there and then; in fact, became intolerably bumptious.”
“Yes, I heard that from Skelsey, just when I was wondering hard how Spence was in a sudden position to undertake a—well, not inexpensive liability.”
She gave him a little punch on the arm—not ill-naturedly, for she was rather amused.
“It’s mean of you to say that, Hilary. Come now, you can’t say you found it an ‘expensive liability.’”
“Well, I’ll concede I didn’t, Hermia—not pecuniarily, that is. But it isn’t to say that Spence would not have. I thought you were going to make a serious business of it that time. Why didn’t you? You had hooked your fish, and seemed to be playing him all right. Then, just when you ought to have gaffed him—up goes the top joint, whipping aloft, and the fish is off.”
“He was a cur, and I’m well rid of him,” she returned, and there was a hard, vindictive gleam in her dark eyes. “I did mean serious business, and so did he—very much so. Do you know what choked him off, Hilary? It was when he learned there was no necessity for you to set me free—that I was free as air already. While he thought I was beyond his reach, he declared he was only living for the day when I was no longer so. But, directly he found I was quite within it, and had been all along, he cooled off with a sort of magical rapidity.”