Gerard’s white face flushed, and he did not answer. The rather less boorish Edgar said quickly:—
“You couldn’t work yet awhile, if you wanted to, could you? You will have to get strong first.”
“Well, but I should get all right again faster if I had something to occupy myself with. I don’t care for the life you fellows lead, loafing and getting into mischief,” retorted Gerard.
“Well, you got into worse mischief than we,” replied Geoffrey.
Gerard shook his head.
“I think you both know that isn’t true,” he said quietly. “My uncle believes me, I’m almost sure.”
“But,” urged Geoffrey, not without reason, “if you didn’t do what they sent you to prison for, your story points a very bad moral. For, while you, who worked hard and did no harm got penal servitude as a reward, we, who’ve never done anything but enjoy ourselves and who never mean to do anything else, have managed to do it without interference from anybody!”
Gerard smiled grimly.
“Well, I don’t envy your existence,” said he. “On the contrary, my sympathy is with my wife, who has evidently deeply offended my uncle by doing what I admire her for doing, and setting up in business instead of starving on a wretchedly inadequate income.”
As he uttered these words, Gerard could not help noticing that his cousins listened with a sort of demure grimness, and then that they exchanged furtive looks. Now he was himself suffering from an unsatisfied curiosity concerning his wife’s whereabouts, and this attitude of the two young men increased his uneasiness about her.