“Surely you might have trusted me?”
“It isn’t that I couldn’t trust you, for I can and always have done. As it happened, Mrs. Chamberlain was, as you know, by way of being an heiress, and Chamberlain was ridiculously in love.”
“Can a man be ridiculously in love?” put in Regina.
“Yes, very much so. When I married you I told you everything that had happened to me, good, bad and indifferent—Chamberlain didn’t, and Mrs. Chamberlain is possessed of a demon of jealousy. She got fixed in her silly little head that Chamberlain had been a sort of King Arthur until she met him. A moment’s reflection would have told the silly little fool that the less she inquired into her husband’s past the better, and Chamberlain was so much in love with her, and in such a hurry to catch the little heiress, that he did not completely sever ties that he had contracted previously, and trusted to luck to go on shelling out to this Frenchwoman who had had an affair with him lasting some years before his marriage. The French lady did not like being put on short commons, still less did she like being pensioned off, and she began to make herself unpleasant. Poor old Chamberlain got himself into an awful muddle, and confided everything to me. I thought him a fool, and I told him so very plainly; but he’s my partner, and I couldn’t refuse to help him out. The day that I went to Templeton’s and bought that bracelet, Chamberlain went in quite a different direction to have an interview with Madame Raumonier and try to bring her to reason. At that time Mrs. Chamberlain used to make stringent inquiries as to how he had spent every moment of his time. As a matter of fact she had come to the office for him that very day, and was told that he had already gone. When he got home she was told some necessary and harmless lies to the effect that he had been to Templeton’s to buy her a bracelet. Heaven only knows what would have happened if she had found out that Chamberlain had never been near Templeton’s.”
“But why were you dragged into it?”
“Oh, I was trying to get a settlement.”
“Why did you bring her to Paris?”
“Well, it was like this. Chamberlain and I finally agreed between ourselves that the only way to get a settlement of the affair was to provide Madame Raumonier with an income sufficient to live upon for the rest of her life. He didn’t grudge that, he’s not a mean man, and he offered to settle five pounds a week upon her on one condition: that she cleared out of England and never crossed the Channel again.”
“Oh, I see. But why did you have to come to Paris to settle that?”
“My dear child, Madame Raumonier is no fool. She had no notion of being cut adrift from Chamberlain and left stranded at her age—she must be at least five-and-thirty—without the certainty of a provision being made for her. I took her out to dinner one night—dined at the Trocadero—”