“Dead!” he said in a dazed way, with his jaws working nervously as he swallowed some bread. “Why, she was quite a young woman; she couldn’t have been thirty——”
“Thirty!” echoed Carrie, in a scornful undertone.
“We dined here, five years ago—you were of the party. We cooked the dinner ourselves; she thought it such fun. The soup was salt—you must remember.”
His voice was so anxious that I said soothingly, “Of course I do.”
“What a handsome girl she was!” he continued with sad enthusiasm. “It was the night of the Duke of York’s wedding.”
“The Duke of York’s wedding?” cried irrepressible Carrie. “That is ever so long ago. We had a holiday from school. My mother went to see the illuminations and got her pocket picked.”
She looked at Murphy with a new expression. He had been doing exactly the same thing five years before—only the girl was different. He must be quite old. She had not thought of that before. She had only considered that he was a gentleman. She felt depressed by the antique flavor of her company. I could see that she was thinking fervently that in future she would go straight back to Battersea.
“We were a jolly party,” Murphy went on. “What a row Elizabeth made next day!”
“Elizabeth?”
“Married sister. Lived in Colville Gardens. Husband a parson—but a decent fellow. I used to visit them—of course they did not suspect—Adeline was clever, but she got found out like all the clever ones. There was a deuce of a row. Soon after she married Pray. Neither of them had a penny. Went and starved in the country. I could not have married her. It was out of the question altogether. She did not expect it. How fond she was of me!” He smiled, more with vanity than regret.