"Oh! I did not know that the Duke had seen Harold Garth."
"Leah," cried her husband, fiercely, "you're a--never mind. Whatever you are, I'm another."
"Did the Duke leave a cheque for me?" asked Leah, more business-like than sympathetic.
Jim banged about among the medicine bottles. "Five hundred."
"Dear man," cried his wife, snatching the cheque from his very reluctant hand. "I must go and dress for the journey."
"Won't you kiss me, Leah?" quavered Jim, really moved, and quite forgetting the rascally plot in which he was taking so prominent a part.
At the door she turned with an expression of withering scorn. "Keep your kisses for your wife, Mr. Berring!" cried this too-previous widow, and left him to digest the insult at his leisure.
[ CHAPTER XIII]
The paragraph sent by Leah to her pet editor intimated concisely to the tuft-hunting world of Tom, Dick, and Harriet, that the suddenly developed pulmonary complaint of Lord James Kaimes necessitated his wintering in Jamaica. This intelligence surprised the clubs, as Jim's hectoring voice and devotion to damp field sport had always suggested aggressively sound lungs.
"Never knew him to be chippy in his life," growled one man, who admired Leah as much as he hated Jim for possessing her. "What's his game this time, I wonder?"