“And—what do you think—a blackguard followed me to-day and tried to blackmail me for ten pounds on the Embankment.”
A sound brought his face round to attention. His wife was lying back on the cushions of her chair in paroxysms of soft laughter.
It was clear to Granter, then, that what he had really been afraid of was just this. His wife would laugh at him—laugh at him slipping from the pedestal! Yes! It was that he had dreaded—not any disbelief in his fidelity. Somehow he felt too large to be laughed at. He was too large! Nature had set a size beyond which husbands——!
“I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” he said frigidly. “There’s no more odious crime than blackmail.”
His wife was silent; tears were trickling down her cheeks.
“Did you give it him?” she said in a strangled voice.
“Of course not.”
“What was he threatening?”
“To tell you.”
“But what?”