“Dear Lord Garrow,” said Pensée, “his wife is a friend of mine—she is the most charming person.”
Sara put out her hand and touched Reckage on the arm.
“Do you think,” she asked, “that the wife will be an obstacle in his way?”
“Who can tell? Of course she has means, and he likes to do everything well.”
“Speaking for myself,” said Harding, “I have always held that a man's career rests rather on his genius than his marriage.”
“But you, my dear fellow,” put in Lord Garrow, testily, “you retired from political life because your theories could find no illustration there.”
“Pardon me,” said Sir Piers, with a grim laugh. “I retired because I had a faultless wife but unfortunately no genius. I shall therefore watch your friend's triumph or failure—for his position would seem to be precisely the reverse of my own—with peculiar sympathy.”
“Ah! I fear you are rather heartless,” exclaimed Sara. “For a man to have gone so far as Orange, and to know that perhaps—I say, perhaps—he can hope no higher because he made a fool of himself about a woman!”
“You speak as though it were a romantic marriage—a question of love.”
“Of course,” said the young lady softly. “It is a great passion.”