"He has," said Meyer, with a twinkle in his eye; "suits and suits, almost as if he were going to be married."
"Married!" cried the other. "What put that into your head, Mr. Meyer? He's not a marrying man. Why, I've never seen him as much as glance an eye at a female."
"Oh, it was only my joke," said Meyer.
Now, in Mudd's soul there had lain for years an uneasiness, a crumpled rose-leaf of thought that touched him sometimes as he turned at night in bed. It was the fear that some day Simon might ruin Mudd's life with a mistress. He couldn't stand a mistress. He had always sworn that to himself; the experience of fellow butlers whose lives were made loathsome by mistresses would have been enough without his own deep-rooted antipathy to females, except as spectacular objects. Mrs. Jukes was a relation of his, and he could stand her; the maid-servants were automata beneath his notice—but a mistress!
Mad alarm filled his mind, for his heart told him that the words of Meyer had foundation in probability.
That affair of last year, when Simon had departed and returned in new strange clothes, might have been the courting, this the real thing?
He left the tailor's, called a taxi and drove to the office.
Brownlow was in.
"What is it, Mudd?" asked Brownlow, as the latter was shown into his room.