"Isn't she the most wonderful wife in the world?" John whispered to him as he grasped the step-rods of the train.
"Yes, she is a wonderful woman," Rodrigo replied sincerely, and looked over John's head to return her languid wave of good-bye.
Going back in the train, he thought of her and John, and of their chances for happiness. He recalled the conversation Warren Pritchard had hesitantly started on the way to the golf links that morning, and then dropped.
"I say, Rodrigo," Warren had begun, after fumbling around obviously for an opening, "I know it may sound caddish of me, and I shouldn't be talking this way, but what really do you know of this lady whom my brother-in-law has married?"
"Oh, I only know her slightly," Rodrigo had replied offhandedly. "She comes of an excellent San Francisco family, I believe, connected with the Palmers—your father-in-law knows the Palmers well."
"I wasn't thinking of her family. But will she make old John happy?"
"Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know. She isn't at all the sort I would have thought John would have picked for a wife. Very stunning woman, worldly wise, she must have had hundreds of men eager to marry her. John is a fine chap, we all know, but he's not the kind to knock a beautiful woman's eye out exactly."
"She seems to love him very much. And he's crazy about her, of course. Their marriage looks very promising to me."
Warren shrugged his broad shoulders. "Oh, well, it's as I thought. If you do know anything more about her, you're too damned much of a gentleman to spill it—and I'm not enough of a scoundrel to press you for it. I may add, though, in my own justification and with his sanction, that my honored father-in-law is the one who is slightly worried and who set me up to questioning you. Frankly, he is a bit suspicious of the lady. And his judgment is not to be slighted, you know; he has an uncanny faculty for fathoming folks."