“You didn’t mention it to her?”
Mrs. Blair looked at her husband in surprise, and he hastened to make amends by acquiescing in the propriety of her conduct, when he said:
“Oh, of course not.”
He seemed to drop the subject then, but that it remained uppermost in his mind was shown later, when he said:
“I think she will be weaned away from him after a while, don’t you? That is—if he stays long enough.”
Mrs. Blair was not so hopeful; perhaps, too, in her romantic ideal of devotion, she did not wish Lavinia to be weaned away. But she avoided a direct answer by the suggestion:
“Perhaps he will be weaned away from her.”
This possibility had not occurred to the judge.
“Why, the idea!” he said resentfully. “Do you think him capable of such baseness?”
Mrs. Blair laughed.