The rasp had gone out of his voice. He was speaking in a pleasant, confidential tone, and Mr. Flexen did not believe a word he said. At the least he was exaggerating the distress he would have felt at leaving the Army; but Mr. Flexen had the strongest feeling that he would have felt next to no distress at all. Again he was astonished. Colonel Grey was lying to him just as Lady Loudwater had lied. What could be their reason? What on earth had they done?
He kept his astonishment out of his face, and said in a sympathetic voice: "Yes, I can see that. And then, again, it would have been painful and very unpleasant to feel that your thoughtlessness had landed Lady Loudwater in the Divorce Court."
"Oh, Lord, no!" said Colonel Grey quickly. "There was no chance of any divorce proceedings. Even for a divorce case, at any rate one brought by the husband, there must be some grounds; he must have some evidence. The cock-and-bull story of a gamekeeper is hardly enough to found a divorce case on, is it?"
"Oh, I don't know. The gamekeeper might convince a jury. You know what juries are. You can never tell what form their stupidity will take," said Mr. Flexen.
"But apart from the lack of evidence, there was no chance of a divorce case. I tell you, Loudwater hadn't got it in him," said Grey confidently. "He'd have threatened and been abusive. He'd have gone on throwing that cock-and-bull story at Lady Loudwater for as long as she continued to stick to him; but it would have stopped at that. His infernal temper never went any deeper than his lungs. Lady Loudwater had nothing to fear."
"Yet you think that he would have done his best to hound you out of the Army?" said Mr. Flexen, finding this conception of Lord Loudwater as a harmless, if violent, vapourer somewhat inconsistent.
"That's quite another matter," said Grey quickly. "It merely meant using his influence behind my back with some scurvy politician. There wouldn't have been any publicity attached to that, any exposure of his bullying. He'd have done that all right."
"I should have thought that a man of Lord Loudwater's violent temper would rather have sought an open row," Mr. Flexen persisted.
"Of course—if he'd been really violent. But he wasn't, I tell you. He was only a blustering bully where women and servants were concerned—people he could cow. I tell you, I made it quite clear that he crumpled up directly you stood up to him. Why, hang it all! Any man with the soul of a mouse who really believed that I had been making love to his wife, couldn't have taken the things I told him without going for me at any risk. And as I'm still rather crocked up, and he knew it, there must have seemed precious little risk about it. I tell you that he was just a blustering ruffian."
Mr. Flexen had a strong impression that Colonel Grey was unused to being as expansive as this, that he was talking for talking's sake, possibly to put him off asking some question which would be difficult or dangerous to answer. He could not for the life of him think what that question could be.