Dick Learmer, dressed in an irreproachable frock-coat which fitted his elegant figure very well, and with a fine black pearl in his necktie, an advertisement of his grief for the decease of his cousin Rupert, was lunching tête-à-tête with his cousin’s widow on that same Sunday and at the very same hour that Rupert was indulging in the melancholy cogitations which have been recorded while he munched some biscuits washed down with a bottle of stout in his dirty cabin on board the tramp steamer. The Brook Street landlady was a good cook, and Edith’s Chablis, not to mention a glass of port, a cup of coffee, and a liqueur brandy that followed, were respectively excellent. The warm fire in the pretty little sitting-room and the cigarettes he smoked over it, also proved acceptable upon this particularly cold and dreary Sabbath afternoon. Lastly, the lovely Edith, dressed in very attractive and artistic mourning, was a pleasant object to the eye as she sat opposite to him upon a low chair screening her face from the fire with a feather fan from the mantel-piece.
Dick, as we know, had always admired her earnestly, and now, whether the luncheon and the port, or the charming black dress set off with its white collar and cuffs, or the beautiful blue eyes and golden hair above were responsible for the result, he admired her more than ever. There was a pause in their conversation, during which she contemplated him reflectively.
“You are getting to look dreadfully middle-aged and respectable, Dick,” she remarked presently. “It’s almost oppressive to those who knew you in your youth.”
“I am middle-aged, and certainly I am respectable, Edith. Who wouldn’t be that had sat yesterday upon the Board of a Life Insurance Society with five directors, none of whom were under seventy? What interest they can take in life and its affairs, I am sure I don’t know.”
“Probably they are only interested in other people’s lives, or other people are interested in theirs,” answered Edith carelessly.
“By the way,” said Dick, “there was a question before us yesterday about poor Rupert’s insurance.”
Edith winced a little at the name, but only looked up in query.
“You know,” he went on, “it was a pretty heavy one, and he only paid a single premium, a very bad job for the office. Well, you haven’t claimed that £10,000, and the question was whether you should be communicated with on the matter. They settled to leave it alone, and that old death’s-head of a chairman remarked with a grin that he had never known money which was due to remain unasked for. Why don’t you ask? £10,000 is always handy,” he added, looking at her keenly.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Everybody assumes it, but I can’t see any proof that Rupert is really dead.”
“Nonsense,” he replied, almost angrily, “he is as dead as Julius Cæsar. He must be; that Egyptian sergeant, what’s his name, said that he saw them all shot down, and then himself escaped.”