"Yes, really." Noel was munching complacently between his words. "I never thought you'd do it. The odds were dead against you. She only married you to get away from Aunt Philippa. Of course you know that?"
"Really?" Mordaunt said again. He was not apparently paying much attention to the boy's chatter.
"Yes, really," Noel reiterated, with a grin. "It's solid, simple, sordid fact. The only chap she ever seriously cared about was a little beast of a Frenchman she chummed up with years ago at Valpré. I never met the beggar myself, but I'm sure he was a beast. But I'll bet she'd have married him if she'd had the chance. They were as thick as thieves."
At this point Mordaunt opened the morning paper with a bored expression, and straightway immersed himself in its contents.
Noel turned his attention to his breakfast, which he dispatched with astonishing rapidity, finally remarking, as he rose: "But you never can tell what a woman will do when it comes to the point—unless she's a suffragette, in which case she may be safely relied on to make a howling donkey of herself for all time."
CHAPTER XI
A BROKEN REED
"But, my good girl, five hundred pounds!" Rupert looked down at his sister with an expression half-humorous, half-dismayed. "What do you think I'm made of?" he inquired.
She stood before him, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. "I must have it! I must have it!" she said piteously. "I thought you might be able to raise it on something."
"But not on nothing," said Rupert.