“Yes; she and a niece.”
“H’m!” said Scott, and Selden knew as well as if he had said it, that Scott had made up his mind to find her.
“Interview her by all means, if you can,” he said. “You’ll see in a minute that it will be an outrage to drag her through the mud.”
“I’m not going to drag her through the mud,” Scott protested; “but of course I’ve got to mention the marriage and it can’t do any harm to see the lady. I was wondering, though, how that angle of the story will strike them over in America.”
“I have stopped wondering how anything will strike them over there!” said Selden.
Scott grinned cheerfully.
“Yes, I know we are not in the League yet. But this marriage story may make a difference. Doesn’t it make any difference to you?”
“Not a particle—and it won’t make any difference to anybody. Most Americans have been so stuffed with cheap romance and pseudo-memoirs and backstairs gossip—to say nothing of the movies!—that they consider a morganatic wife and two or three mistresses as natural to a prince as—well, as two legs or two arms. He is incomplete without them!”
“Perhaps so,” Scott agreed; “but I should think it would make some difference to the girl.”
“If I were she, I’d prefer him to have had one wife rather than a dozen mistresses.”