“You were very thoughtful, father,” she murmured; “but I am not sure that I should think of myself as really a widow.”
“You are a widow,” he said, with some measure of asperity.
She shook her head in a way that suggested she felt that she was not worthy of such an honour.
“You are a widow, and I hope that you will remember that,” he repeated. “Your marriage was quite regular. There was no flaw in it.”
“I suppose, then——”
“You may not merely suppose, you may be sure of it. Do you fancy that there would be a flaw in any business, that I had to do with?”
“I do not, indeed. This was, however, a bad bit of business for me, father. However, we need say no more about it. I don’t wish ever again to hear that wretched business alluded to. It has passed out of my life altogether, thanks be to God, and now it only remains in my mind as a horrid nightmare.”
“It was a legal marriage, and marriage is a holy thing.”
He spoke with the finality of the Vicar’s churchwarden—as if he were withstanding the onslaught of a professed freethinker. His last statement was, however, too much for the patience of his daughter—to be more exact, it was too much for her mask of humility which she had put on to save the trouble of discussion with him.
She turned upon him, speaking with a definiteness and finality quite equal in force to his display of the same qualities.