The Adventures of Harry Richmond — Complete

by George Meredith

I plucked him from his narrator's vexatious and inevitable commencement: 'Temple, tell me, did she go to the altar?'

He answered 'Yes!'

'She did? Then she's a widow?'

'No, she isn't,' said Temple, distracting me by submitting to the lead I distracted him by taking.

'Then her husband's alive?'

Temple denied it, and a devil seized him to perceive some comicality in the dialogue.

'Was she married?'

Temple said 'No,' with a lurking drollery about his lips. He added, 'It's nothing to laugh over, Richie.'

'Am I laughing? Speak out. Did Edbury come to grief overnight in any way?'

Again Temple pronounced a negative, this time wilfully enigmatical: he confessed it, and accused me of the provocation. He dashed some laughter with gravity to prepare for my next assault.