“What? Hurry up!”
“I meant that I wondered if I dared tell you my thoughts—what I was thinking just then.”
“H’m,” was all the help she vouchsafed him.
“Will you be angry?”
“Very like—how can I tell?”
“Shall I plunge, and find out?”
“As you like. But I don’t mind making it six-pence.”
“The fee nerves me. I was wishing I knew, and could ask without impertinence, something about your first marriage.”
“My first marriage indeed!” she cried indignantly. “How often are you pleased to imagine I have been married? I’ve only been married once, I’d have you know.”
Latham flushed hotly, and she tilted back in her chair and laughed at him openly. Then the dimpling face—her dimples were delightful—sobered, and she leaned towards the fire—brooding—her hands clasped on her knees, her foot on the fender. “I’ll tell you, then, as well as I can—why not? John was quite unlike any man you’ve known. You don’t grow such men in England. It isn’t the type. He was big, and blond and reckless—‘all wool and a yard wide.’ I loved my husband very dearly. We American women usually do. We can, you know, for we don’t often marry for any other reason. Why should we? Mr. Hilary was a lawyer—a great criminal pleader. He saved more murderers than any other one man at the Illinois bar. He was a Westerner—every bit of him. His crying was wonderful, and oh! how he bullied his juries. He made them obey him. He made every one obey him.”