‘Well, as I have said, her ladyship worried herself a good deal unnecessarily. I never can understand why women have such particular ideas. I suppose they learn them from the parson. Now, there was Lady ---’ (naming the wife of a volatile premier forgotten now, but much beloved by the British public for his spirited foreign policy and his low Church bishops). ‘I had the honour of dining with her ladyship at the time there was a little scandal afloat respecting his lordship’s proceedings with a governess who had made her appearance in the family of one of his relatives. The thing was in the papers, and it was nonsense pretending to ignore it. Somehow or other it was incidentally alluded to.
‘“Ah,” said her ladyship, turning to me with one of her most bewitching smiles, “that is so like my dear old man.”
‘Her ladyship was a sensible woman, and loved her gay Lothario not a bit the less for his little peccadilloes. I never saw a more harmonious pair. They were a model couple, and if they had gone to Dunmow for the flitch of bacon, they would have won it. I never could get my lady to look at things in such a sensible manner, and I do fear that at times she fretted herself a good deal, and we know that is bad for health. One of our nursemaids was a perfect Hebe. I could not resist the temptation. I believe some ill-natured female aroused my lady’s suspicions. At any rate, one cold winter’s evening she forced herself into my sanctum. I did not happen to be alone. Hebe, as I called her, was with me. We had a scene. I took the mail train that same night to Paris. The poor girl, I understand, was turned out of the house the moment I had gone. My opinion is she stole that baby out of revenge. It was missing about a month after. I must own her ladyship took every step she could to prove that the girl had stolen the child. We had detectives hard at work, and when the child was restored in a mysterious way, the matter dropped. Then, alas! the child died, and the mother too. That was many years ago, and from that day to this I never have been able to hear anything of the woman. The child is buried in the family vault, but I have been much troubled lately.’
‘As how?’
‘Why, suppose the child is not dead. That the one restored was someone else’s. That I have a son and heir suddenly about to be sprung upon me, at an inconvenient season. That would be awkward, to say the least.’
‘D--- awkward,’ was the sympathetic reply.
‘Suppose, for the sake of argument, I were to marry again, and have a family, and another son and heir, and a claimant came forward for the family title and estate.’
‘Ah, that would be a nice business for the lawyers, and a godsend for the newspapers.’
‘Undoubtedly, but a bad one for everyone else, especially if the costs were to come out of the estate.’