"If that's all you've got to say, Mr. Usher—"
"It isn't all I've got to say. What I got to say is this. Before you was married, Randall, I don't mind telling you now, my girl was a bit too close about you for my fancy. I've never rightly understood how you two came together."
There, as they fixed him, his little eyes took on their craftiness again and his mouth a smile, a smile of sensual tolerance and understanding, as between one man of the world and another.
"I don't know, and I don't want to know. But however it was—I'm not askin', mind you—however it was"—He was all solemn now—"you made yourself responsible for that girl. And responsible you will be held."
It may have been that Mr. Usher drew a bow at a venture; it may have been that he really knew, that he had always known. Anyhow, that last stroke of his was, in its way, consummate. It made it impossible for Randall to hit back effectively; impossible for him to say now, if he had wished to say it, that he had not been warned (for it seemed to imply that if Mr. Usher's suspicions were correct, Randall had had an all-sufficient warning); impossible for him to maintain, as against a father whom he, upon the supposition, had profoundly injured, an attitude of superior injury. If Mr. Usher had deceived Randall, hadn't Randall, in the first instance, deceived Mr. Usher? In short, it left them quits. It closed Randall's mouth, and with it the discussion, and so that the balance as between them leaned if anything to Mr. Usher's side.
"Well, I'm sorry for you, Randall."
As if he could afford it now, Mr. Usher permitted himself a return to geniality. He paused in the doorway.
"If at any time you should want a hamper, you've only got to say so."
And Randall did not blame him. He said to himself: "Poor old thing. It's funk—pure funk. He's afraid he may have to take her back himself. And who could blame him?"
Funny that his father-in-law should have taken the same line as his Uncle Randall. Only, whereas his Uncle Randall had reckoned with the alternative of divorce, his father-in-law had not so much as hinted at the possibility.