“We must find you a wife, eh, Claire? Eh, Miss Peterson?” continued Sir Adrian, rubbing the palm of one bony hand slowly up and down over the back of the other. “I’m sure, Claire, you would like to see so—intimate—a friend as Mr. Brennan happily married, wouldn’t you?”
“I should like to see him happy,” answered Claire with tight lips.
“Just so—just so,” agreed her husband in a queer cackling tone as though inwardly amused. “Well, get him a wife, my dear. You are such friends that you should know precisely the type of woman which appeals to him.”
He nodded and turned to go, gliding away with an odd shuffling gait, and muttering to himself as he went: “Precisely the type—precisely.”
As he disappeared from view down one of the branching paths of the shrubbery, an odious little laugh, half chuckle, half snigger, came to the ears of the three listeners.
Claire’s face set itself in lines that made her look years older than her age.
“You’d better go,” she whispered unevenly. “We shan’t be able to talk any more now that he knows you are here. He’ll be hovering round—somewhere.”
Jean nodded.
“Yes, we’d better be going. Come along, Nick. And let us know, Claire”—dropping her voice—“as soon as you have found out for certain what day he goes away. You can telephone down to us, can’t you?”
“Yes. I’ll ring up when he’s out of the house some time,” she answered “Or send a message. Anyway, I’ll manage to let you know somehow. Oh!”—stretching out her arms ecstatically—“imagine a day, of utter freedom! A whole day!”