“There has been nothing—I mean no letter; I have not heard from her for months—not since you saw her before. I think if there had been anything unusual in her mind she would have written. Don’t you? I dare say what you saw was only one of those ungoverned outbreaks of temper that mean nothing.”
“I hope so,” said Harry.
“I blame myself, I’m no villain, I didn’t mean badly, but I’m a cursed fool. It’s all quite straight though, and it doesn’t matter a farthing what she does—not a farthing,” broke out Charles Fairfield. “But I would not have poor little Alice frightened and made miserable, and what had I best do, and where do you think we had best go?” He lowered his voice, and glanced toward the door as he said this, suddenly remembering that Alice might come in the midst of their consultation.
“Go? For the present arn’t you well enough where you are? Wait a bit anyhow. But I wonder you didn’t tell Alice; she ought to ’a known something about it—oughtn’t she, before you married her, or whatever you call it.”
“Before I married her? of course,” said Charles sternly; “married her!—you don’t mean, I fancy, to question my marriage?”
Charles was looking at him with a very grim steady gaze.
“Why, what the devil should I know, or care about lawyers’ nonsense and pleadings, my dear fellow; I never could make head or tail of them, only as we are talking here so confidential, you and me, whatever came uppermost—I forget what—I just rapped out—has that Hoxton lady any family?”
“Don’t you know she has not?” replied Charles.
“I know it now, but she might have a sieve full for anything I knew,” answered Harry.
“I think, Harry, if you really thought she and I were married, that was too important a question for you, wasn’t it, to be forgotten so easily?” said Charles.