"He doesn't know everything."
"Well I do," snapped Mrs. Parsley, "and there is nothing for you to be ashamed of that I can see. If there was, do you think I'd be sitting here? I approve of all you have done—yes, even to taking that will. I wish you had burnt it. And yet I don't know——" she added. "No; then you wouldn't have got rid of that idiot. After all, things are best as they are. Leave those two to themselves, my dear, and they'll finish each other sooner or later—sooner rather than later I fancy; though she'll manage to come out 'on top' as the Americans say—d'you know, I do like the Americans, dear!"
"But I really believe Hilda loves him—in fact, sometimes I think I was very wrong not to leave him to her."
"Loves him! Rubbish! It'll be a day with more than twenty-four hours in it when Hilda loves anyone but herself. Bless me, I believe you've a hankering after that man still. What you saw in him I never could make out."
"Sometimes I think he must have fascinated me—that it could not really be love I felt for him but pity. I saw how it was with him, and thought that I could save him."
"Save him! Strikes me, Miriam, you've gone through your life looking upon yourself as a sort of human rocket apparatus. You can't save people against their wills, my dear; and some of 'em won't be saved. Look at Shorty—and that Gerald Arkel is a pig if ever there was one. He prefers his own dunghill—that's vulgar perhaps, my dear, but it's expressive, and that's the great thing! Anyhow, I do hope you've got over all that sort of thing now, Miriam, because I have news of the scamp."
"News of Gerald?—Oh, Mrs. Parsley, he is not ill—not dead?"
The old lady snorted.
"Dead. No, my dear, 'naught was never in danger.' He's alive and sinning. But he's alone! Hilda has left him!"
"Hilda—left—Gerald?"