“I have seen Nouna’s mother.”
The Colonel’s jaw dropped, and his irritability suddenly disappeared.
“Madame di—di Valdestillas?” he said in a subdued, tentative tone.
“Oh, no; I’ve had my way. There’s an end once for all to all humbug,” answered George bitterly. “I’ve seen Chloris White.”
Then both remained silent for a while. Truly after this there seemed little to be said. At last the Colonel said in a low voice:
“Now, my boy, you see what I’ve had to live through the last few years. You don’t wonder any longer at my opinion of women?”
But George felt no sympathetic softening. He thought that a man should make sure of the death of his first wife before he married a second, and that he should show a little human feeling for his own daughter.
“I don’t wonder either, Colonel, at Chloris White’s opinion of men,” he said drily.
“You think you have a grievance against me, I see.”
“Frankly, I do. Why didn’t you make a clean breast of it when you found it was I who had married your daughter? You might have trusted me, Colonel, as if I had had no tongue; you know that. And you saw me fall into a villainous trap and live on that infamous woman’s money. O God! The thought of it! When just a whisper would have put me right.”