Then he turned to his wife.
“You—did you know about this—did you know that this was going on?”
Then Maradick saw how wise she had been in her decision to keep the whole affair away from her. It was a turning-point.
If she had been privy to it, Maradick saw, Sir Richard would never forgive her. It would have remained always as a hopeless, impassable barrier between them. It would have hit at the man’s tenderest, softest place, his conceit. He might forgive her anything but that.
And so it was a tremendous clearing of the air when she raised her eyes to her husband’s and said, without hesitation, “No, Richard. Of course not. I knew nothing until just now when Mr. Maradick told me.”
Sir Richard turned back from her to Maradick.
“And so, sir, you see fit, do you, sir, to interfere in matters in which you have no concern. You come between son and father, do you? You——”
But again he stopped. Maradick said nothing. There was nothing at all to say. It was obvious that the actual affair, Tony’s elopement, had not, as yet, penetrated to Sir Richard’s brain. The only thing that he could grasp at present was that some one—anyone—had dared to step in and meddle with the Gales. Some one had had the dastardly impertinence to think that he was on a level with the Gales, some one had dared to put his plebeian and rude fingers into a Gale pie. Such a thing had never happened before.
Words couldn’t deal with it.
He looked as though in another moment he would have a fit. He was trembling, quivering in every limb. Then, in a voice that could scarcely be heard, he said, “My God, I’ll have the law of you for this.”