“With Madame di Valdestillas?”
“Oh, ah, yes, with Madame di Valdestillas. Of course she—she wasn’t Madame di Valdestillas then. She was a little half-bred Indian gipsy.”
George looked cold. The light tone Lord Florencecourt now seemed inclined to take, was not, all things considered, in the best taste.
“She was your wife, then?” he said.
The Colonel answered by a slight convulsion of the top vertebræ of his spine, to admit as little of the accusation as possible.
“Did you divorce her?” he asked, rather puzzled.
“Well, I don’t know whether a divorce out there would be held quite regular over here. There’s the difficulty, you see.”
From which George gathered in a flash of astonishment that the austere and respectable viscount had, when the chain of his first matrimonial alliance grew irksome, troubled no court of law to regain his liberty.
“You understand,” continued the Colonel, meeting his companion’s eyes full for the first time, “that it is quite as much to the lady’s interest as to mine that the affair should not become common gossip.”
“To the mother’s interest, perhaps, not to the daughter’s,” said George coldly.