“Why is Tony so fond of The Hague? Who is Mrs. Vansittart?” she asked, without looking up.
Major White looked stolidly out of the open window for a few minutes before answering.
“Two questions don't make an answer.”
“Not these two questions?” asked Marguerite, with a sudden laugh.
“No; Mrs. Vansittart is a widow, young, and what they usually call 'charming,' I believe. She is clever, yes, very clever, and she was, I suppose, fond of Vansittart; and that is the whole story, I take it.”
“Not exactly a cheery story.”
“No true stories are,” returned the major, gravely.
But Marguerite shook her head. In her wisdom—that huge wisdom of life as seen from the threshold—she did not believe Mrs. Vansittart's story.
“Yes, but novelists and people take a true story and patch it up at the end. Perhaps most people do that with their lives, you know; perhaps Mrs. Vansittart—”
“Won't do that,” said the major, staring in a stupid way out of the window with vacant, short-sighted eyes. “Not even if Tony suggested it—which he won't do.”