“Do you wish to marry again?”
“Well, if you will have it so, I think I do. But then, you know, you must consider my position. You talk of a spoilt life, but you spoilt and wasted my youth.”
“It is easy to put it so,” said John Temple, bitterly.
“Well, you married me and left me, did you not?”
“We agreed to part.”
“Yes, after you had made my life so unpleasant that there was no standing it. But I don’t want to fight, or say disagreeable things. I really want to come to an arrangement with you, an arrangement by which you will benefit by being free; and I shall benefit by being free also—only you must remember you are a rich man.”
John Temple was silent for a moment or two; he was turning it over in his mind whether to accept her proposition; then he remembered he had not told Mr. Churchill of his marriage to Kathleen Weir, that he could not be divorced without this being publicly known.
“Now I’ll be quite frank with you,” she went on, looking at his moody face. “I’ll want either a lump sum down, or a largely increased allowance for swearing falsely and exhibiting in court the three handsful of beautiful hair that you tore out of my unfortunate head. You must pay, you see, for these little freaks of temper.”
“Your jesting is out of place.”
“Not at all, my friend; life has always its comical side. For instance, it is comical my coming here to make a sensible bargain with you, instead of talking of my broken heart.”