My mother smiled. “Don't say anything to her. She's trying to be agreeable.”
My father laughed and then looked wistful. “I almost wish she wouldn't,” he remarked; “we were used to it, and she was rather amusing.”
But my aunt, being a woman of will, kept her way; and about the same time that occurred tending to confirm her in her new departure. This was the introduction into our small circle of James Wellington Gadley. Properly speaking, it should have been Wellington James, that being the order in which he had been christened in the year 1815. But in course of time, and particularly during his school career, it had been borne in upon him that Wellington is a burdensome name for a commonplace mortal to bear, and very wisely he had reversed the arrangement. He was a slightly pompous but simpleminded little old gentleman, very proud of his position as head clerk to Mr. Stillwood, the solicitor to whom my father was now assistant. Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal dated back to the Georges, and was a firm bound up with the history—occasionally shady—of aristocratic England. True, in these later years its glory was dwindling. Old Mr. Stillwood, its sole surviving representative, declined to be troubled with new partners, explaining frankly, in answer to all applications, that the business was a dying one, and that attempting to work it up again would be but putting new wine into worn-out skins. But though its clientele was a yearly diminishing quantity, much business yet remained to it, and that of a good class, its name being still a synonym for solid respectability; and my father had deemed himself fortunate indeed in securing such an appointment. James Gadley had entered the firm as office boy in the days of its pride, and had never awakened to the fact that it was not still the most important legal firm within the half mile radius from Lombard Street. Nothing delighted him more than to discuss over and over again the many strange affairs in which Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal had been concerned, all of which he had at his tongue's tip. Could he find a hearer, these he would reargue interminably, but with professional reticence, personages becoming Mr. Y. and Lady X.; and places, “the capital of, let us say, a foreign country,” or “a certain town not a thousand miles from where we are now sitting.” The majority of his friends, his methods being somewhat forensic, would seek to discourage him, but my aunt was a never wearied listener, especially if the case were one involving suspicion of mystery and crime. When, during their very first conversation, he exclaimed: “Now why—why, after keeping away from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her know whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her? That is what I want explained to me!” he paused, as was his wont, for sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a yawn: “Oh, I'm sure I don't know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose,” replied with prompt intelligence:
“To murder her—by slow poison.”
“To murder her! But why?”
“In order to marry the other woman.”
“What other woman?”
“The woman he had just met and fallen in love with. Before that it was immaterial to him what had become of his wife. This woman had said to him: 'Come back to me a free man or never see my face again.'”
“Dear me! Now that's very curious.”
“Nothing of the sort. Plain common sense.”