'Then you must have known that my cousins were dead when you came to
Kingthorpe last night?' said Ida, looking up at her husband.
Suddenly, in a flash of memory, came back those thoughtless words of hers spoke at Les Fontaines, when her father talked of the possibility of inheriting a fortune and a baronetcy. She remembered how she had said, in bitterness of spirit, 'Of course they will live to the age of Methuselah. Whoever heard of luck coming our way?' And now this kind of luck, which meant sudden death for two amiable, open-handed young men, had come her way. How lightly she had spoken of those two young lives! how bitter had been her thoughts about the rich and happy!
This thing had been known in London yesterday afternoon. It was this
knowledge which had sent Brian Walford to Kingthorpe to claim his wife.
She had suddenly become a wife worth claiming—the daughter of Sir
Reginald Palliser of Wimperfield.
'You knew this,' she repeated, looking at her husband, with infinite scorn expressed in eye and lip.
'No, upon my soul,' he answered; 'I left town early. It flashed upon me that it was Bessie's birthday—you would be all assembled at The Knoll—there was just time for me to get there before the fun was over—don't you know—'
'And you had not seen the papers? you did not know this?' added Ida, fixing him with her eyes.
'No, upon my word. I had no idea!'
She knew that he was lying.
'Then it was a very curious coincidence,' she said freezingly.
'How a coincidence?'