“Yes, she’s bright,” John Musgrave repeated, as though the realisation of this fact, striking him for the first time, accounted for what he had been at a loss to comprehend before. “I expect that’s why Charlie married her.”
“My dear fellow,” the other said, with a hardly repressed smile, “did it never occur to you that Charlie might have had a better reason?”
“A better reason?” John Musgrave echoed.
“Yes. Don’t you think it possible that he married her for love?”
John Musgrave flushed deeply.
“For love!” he said.
The vicar smiled openly now.
“People do marry for love occasionally,” he remarked.
“Do they?... Do they indeed?”
John Musgrave was gazing into the fire again, his expression doubtful, faintly discomfited—almost, it seemed to the man watching him in puzzled amusement, shocked.