“Yes. Human nature is that way—and here too, there was an additional psychological motive. The knowledge would be likely to make a difference, you know. Knock a few chips out of your—er—prestige.”
She burst out laughing. “You have a neat, but rather horrid way of putting things, Hilary. Yes. I quite see what you mean.”
He made no reply, and for some moments they strolled on in silence. He could not refuse to entertain a certain amount of admiration for the consummate and practical coolness of this woman. She would make an ideal adventuress. Nor did he in the very least believe that she was destined to come to grief—as by all the rules of morality he ought to have believed. That was not the way of life. She would probably end by entrapping some fool—either very old, or very young—endowed with infinitely more bullion or valuable scrip than gumption or self-control, and flashing out into a very shining light of pattern respectability.
“What are you thinking about, Hilary?” she said at last, stealing a side look at him. “Are you still the least little bit angry with me about—er—about things?”
“Not in the least. I never was. You had had enough of me—we had had enough of each other. The only thing to do was to separate. You may remember I told you so not long before?”
“I remember. And, Hilary—You would not—stand in my way if—”
“Certainly not. If you can humbug, to your advantage, any fool worth humbugging, that’s no business on earth of mine—”
“Ah, that’s just what I thought of you, Hilary,” she said, her whole face lighting up with animation. “You were always a head and shoulders above any other man I ever knew.”
”—But—” he resumed, lifting a warning hand as he stopped and faced her. “There is one and one only I must warn you off, and that most uncompromisingly.”
“Who is it?”