“Yes.”
“And knew from the look on your face that something was wrong?”
“No. I don’t think so. He was considerate and very nice. He’d reconciled himself to the marriage. I’d known, of course, that he didn’t exactly approve of it, but he’d been very tactful.”
“But you did tell Arthur Whitewell the whole story?”
“Yes.”
“And,” I said, watching her narrowly, “I suppose it knocked him right off the Christmas tree?”
“It was a terrible shock to him,” she said. “But he was perfectly splendid. He told me that at first he hadn’t approved of me, but that he finally realized Philip was desperately in love with me, and that he had cared enough about his son so that he wanted him to have whatever would make him happy; that if Philip wanted me, then he had planned to take me into the family and had made up his mind that neither of us would ever know that he hadn’t exactly approved. He was frank enough to tell me that. I was more attracted to him then than I ever had been. He was simply splendid. He comforted me, and — well, he was so wise and understanding and tolerant, and yet he looked at the thing from such a common-sense angle.”
“What was his angle?”
“He said, of course, that now we couldn’t go ahead with the marriage, and he told me what I’d known already, that if Philip realized I’d been married, that there was another man living who had been — the first in my affections, who had been my husband, who had lived with me, who — well, if you know Philip, you understand how he might feel about that. He’s abnormally sensitive, and — his father confirmed my worst fears on that point.”
“Go ahead with the rest of it,” I told her.