"Really, Master! Really! How extremely interesting! Now do please tell us a great deal about Lady Hammerton."
The Master took no notice whatever of Toovey. He sat about a minute longer in his familiar posture, looking before him, his little round hands on his little round knees. Then he said:
"She was a raddled woman."
And his pupils knew he had finished speaking. What he had said was disappointingly little, but uttered in that strange high voice of his, it contained an infinite deal more than appeared on the face of it. A whole discreditable past seemed to emerge from that one word "raddled." Ian Stewart, to whose imagination the woman in the picture made a strange appeal, now broke a lance with the Master on her account.
"She may have been raddled, Master," he said, "but she must have been very remarkable and charming too. Hammerton himself was no fool, yet he adored her to the last."
The Master seemed to hope some one else would speak; but finding that no one did, he uttered again:
"Men often adore bad wives. That does not make them good ones."
Stewart tossed a rebel lock of raven black hair back from his forehead.
"Pardon me, Master, it does make them good wives for those men."
"Oh, surely not good for their higher natures!" protested Toovey, fervently.