Before he could gather his wits together to answer her, she had gone on quietly:
"I won't tell you what I think of your treating Mr. Crichell in this way, after accepting his hospitality all winter. It would not do any good, and it wouldn't interest you. But I am wondering if you couldn't persuade him, in some way, not to make a scandal. Don't interrupt me. Wait a minute. It will be so dreadful for her—for Mrs. Crichell, I mean. How could you have been so careless as to let him find out?"
Walbridge leant across the table towards her, his face almost imbecile in his open-mouthed amazement.
"Do you—do you know what you are talking about?" he stammered. "Are you sane at all? I never heard of such a thing in my born days."
"Oh, yes, I'm sane enough. But I don't want the children to know. It's an awfully bad example for Guy; he'll be home in a day or two. Just think, he's only twenty-one, and he doesn't know—I mean he thinks—oh, yes, it would be awful if there was a scandal."
Ferdinand Walbridge made a great effort and managed to scramble to his feet, mentally as well as physically.
"My dear," he said, modulating his beautiful voice with instinctive skill, "you don't understand. This is not an amourette. I love Clara Crichell. It is the one wish of my life to make her—to marry her."
For many years her indifference to her husband had been so complete, so unqualified by anything except a little retrospective pity, that he had never dreamed of the thoroughness of her knowledge of him. She had never cared to let him know; she had been busy, and it had not seemed worth while, and now she found difficulty in making him understand her position, without unnecessarily hurting his feelings.
"But you can't marry her," she said slowly. "There's me."