'Your husband had good news, I know, when Harvey met him on Saturday.'
'It sounds good,' said Sibyl, 'and I take it for granted it will be as good as it sounds. If that's complicated, well, so is business, and I don't profess to understand the details. I can only say that Hugh seems to be a good deal shrewder and more practical than I thought him. He is always making friends with what I consider the wrong kind of people; now at last he has got hold of just the right man, and it very much puzzles me how he did it. I have known Mr. Redgrave—you've heard it's Mr. Redgrave?—I've known him for several years now, and, between ourselves, I never expected to benefit by the acquaintance.'
Her laugh was so significant that Alma had much ado to keep a steady face.
'I know—things are said about him,' she murmured.
'Things are said about him, as you discreetly put it, my dear Alma.' The voice still rippled with laughter. 'I should imagine Hugh has heard them, but I suppose a man of the world thinks nothing of such trifles. And after all'—she grew serious—'I would rather trust Hugh's judgment than general gossip. Hugh thinks him a "very good fellow". They were together a little in Scotland last autumn, you know, and—it's very wrong to make fun of it, and I shouldn't repeat the story to anyone but you—Mr. Redgrave confided to him that he was a blighted being, the victim of an unhappy love in early life. Can you quite picture it?'
'It has an odd sound,' replied Alma, struggling with rather tense nerves. 'Do you believe the story?'
'I can't see why in the world such a man should invent it. It seems he wanted to marry someone who preferred someone else; and since then he has——'
Sibyl rippled off again.
'He has—what?'
'Been blighted, my dear! Of course, people have different ways of showing blight. Mr. Redgrave, it is rumoured, hides his head in a hermitage, somewhere in the north of Italy, by one of the lakes. No doubt he lives on olives and macaroni, and broods over what might have been. Did you ever hear of that hermitage?'