“But I don’t drink brandy, either,” she declared, strangely flattered, “and I have no pistol pocket.”
“Tuck it in your suitcase,” he insisted seriously. “Something might happen. You might—might—see fit to faint, you know.”
“Oh, no, I never faint,” she protested. “If I haven’t fainted so far I shall hold my own the rest of the way.”
As they sat in the section which Ducie had reserved for her the Colonel eyed him enigmatically, as if referring something for his approval. Then he said bluffly:
“I am sorry I haven’t the ten dollars which you did us the honor to wish to borrow. I have nothing less than a twenty, that you can get changed by the conductor and return to me at your good pleasure. I’m getting rich, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” he laughed gaily, at the incongruity of the jest. “And I never carry anything but large bills.”
He took the little empty mesh bag from her hand and slipped the money in it, despite her protest that she had now no need of it.
“It is never prudent to travel without an emergency fund,” he opined sagaciously. “My affairs are managed by Hugh Treherne now, for a share of the proceeds. He did not want any compensation at all, but I insisted on it. Wonderful head for detail he has, Ducie. I’d go to the asylum and stay there a term or two if it would educate me to make every edge cut as he can.”
When they had alighted on the platform of the first station and stood lifting their hats, as her pale face looked out of the window while the train glided on, Colonel Kenwynton spoke his mind.
“She is as sane as I am, and a fine, well-bred woman. She has married a brute of a husband, and if I were not such an excellent Christian, Ducie, I don’t know what I wouldn’t wish might happen to him.”
Ducie said nothing. Floyd-Rosney was a distasteful subject that he was averse to discuss. They took their places in the electric street car which would whisk them back to town speedily, and, as the train slowly backed on the switch, she saw them through the window, as yet the sole occupants on the return run.