"You, Colonel?" he said. "I beg your pardon. For the minute I didn't recognize you. My thoughts were elsewhere."
He looked on the ground, as one who struggles with manly pride against strong emotion.
"You may have heard of the trouble we are in at the Tower House?" he added.
Rentoul Haig disapproved the "we"; but then he warmly and articulately disapproved the whole matter of the Challoner-Smyrthwaite alliance. Nevertheless he hungered for first-hand news, thirsted for retailable detail; and who could supply these better than Challoner? He pocketed disapproval, and answered with fussy alacrity, peering upward, into the younger man's curiously non-committal countenance, from beneath the shelter of his umbrella.
"Very fortunate to run across you like this, Challoner," he said. "I was coming to leave cards and inquire. Shocking news this, most shocking. I heard the report from Woodford, at the Club, after luncheon, and, I give you my word, it quite upset me."
"I'm not surprised, Colonel," Challoner put in gloomily.
"Why, only yesterday morning I saw her out driving between twelve and one—just upon the half-hour it must have been—as I was crossing The Square on my way to the Club. When Woodford told me, I said, 'God bless my soul, it's incredible!'"
Challoner's lips parted with an unctuous smack.
"Incredible or not, Colonel, it is only too sadly true. In the midst of life we are in death, you know. I don't set up to be a serious man, but an event like this does bring the meaning of those words home to you—makes you think a bit, reminds you what an uncommonly slippery hold even the healthiest of us has on life."
Watching the effect of these lugubrious moralizings upon his auditor, Challoner had the pleasure of seeing the latter's face grow small and blue in the shade of the wet umbrella.—"Looks like a sick frog under a toadstool," he reflected. "Well, let snobby old froggy turn blue, feel blue—the bluer the better." It served him jolly well right. Hadn't he said no end of nasty things about his, Challoner's, coming marriage? Then he proceeded with the amiable operation commonly known as "rubbing it in."