Freke then hinted at a possibility of his marrying, which, considering his divorced condition, gave Mrs. Sherrard a thrill of horror. He saw in an instant that this divorce question was one upon which Mrs. Sherrard’s prejudices, like those of everybody else in the county, were adamantine, and not to be trifled with; so he dropped the obnoxious subject promptly and wisely.
“The fact is,” he said, standing up with his back to the fire, and causing Mrs. Sherrard to notice how excellent was his slight but well-knit figure, “I’ve got to live somewhere, and why not here? I don’t know whether I’ve got anything left of my money or not—anything, that is, that my creditors or my lawyers will let me have in peace—but there’s excellent shooting on the place, and it only cost a song. I think I can stay here as long as I can stay anywhere; you know I am a sort of civilized Bedouin anyhow. And then I own up to a desire to see that little comedy between—between—Millenbeck and Barn Elms played through. It’s an amusing little piece.”
Mrs. Sherrard pricked up her ears. Freke’s reputation as a conquering hero had inspired in her the interest it always does in the female breast. Was it possible that he shouldn’t be making love to either Judith or Jacqueline?
“I’ll tell you what,” he cried, smiling, “they are the most precious pack of innocents at Barn Elms! There’s my uncle—a high-minded, good-natured, unterrified old blunderbuss—the most unsophisticated of the lot. Then my aunt, who belongs properly to the age of Rowena and Rebecca—and Judith.”
Here Freke’s countenance changed a little from its laughing carelessness. His rather ordinary features were full of a piercing and subtile expression.
“Judith fancies, because she has been a wife, a mother, and a widow, that she knows the whole gamut of life, when actually she has only struck the first note correctly a little while ago—no, I forget—that young one. But that’s very one-sided, although intense. She loves the child because he is her own, not because he is Beverley’s—rather in spite of it, I fancy.”
Mrs. Sherrard, in the excitement of the moment—for what is more exciting than unexpected and inside discoveries about our neighbors?—got up too.
“I knew it—I knew it!” she answered, her sharp old eyes getting bright. “I saw Judith when she was a bride, and she wasn’t in the least rapturous. And the next time I saw her she had on that odd widow’s cap she wears, and that blessed baby in her arms; and if ever I saw secret happiness painted on any human countenance it was hers; and all the time she was trying to imagine herself broken-hearted for Beverley Temple.”
“Fudge!” almost shouted Freke. “It’s my belief she’d have traded off six husbands like Beverley for one black-eyed boy like that young one.”
“Beverley,” began Mrs. Sherrard, delighted, yet fluttered by this plain speaking, “you remember, was a big, handsome fellow—rode like a centaur, danced beautifully, the best shot in the county—as polite as a dancing-master or—General Temple—as brave as a lion—”