"Yes, I think I shall. Will you take some more ham, Emma?"
"Your name is the same as my wife's," observed the young clergyman, with a smile, as he passed Mrs. Lewis's plate for more ham: for it was Squire Carr's pleasure that servants did not wait at luncheon.
"Is it? It is a very ugly one," roughly replied Mrs. Lewis, who could not recover her equanimity in the presence of this gentleman. "I can't think how they came to give it me, for my part. I have a prejudice against the name 'Emma.' The woman bore it whom, of all the women I have known in the world, I most disliked."
"It was your mother's name, my dear," said the squire.
"And I think a charming name," said Robert Carr. "I am not sure but it was Emma D'Estival's name that first attracted me to her."
The squire looked up with a sort of start. He remembered the letter written by "Emma Carr, née D'Estival." Of course! she was this young man's wife.
"You look young to have a wife," was all the squire said.
"You look, to me, as if you had no business with one at all," added Mrs. Lewis with blunt plainness. "Sickly men should be cautious how they marry, lest they leave their wives widows. I have been so left. I threw aside my widow's cap only last week."
Robert Carr explained to them what his hurt had been, and how his chest had suffered at times since. He was aware he looked unusually ill just now, he said; but he had looked just as much so about a year and a half before—had coughed also. He should get well now, he supposed, like he did then. For one thing, speaking of his present looks, this matter was harassing him a good deal, and there had been his father's sudden death.
"Oh, by the way, Mr. Arkell, let me ask you something," exclaimed Mrs. Lewis suddenly. "I have heard the strangest thing. That a gentleman, a Mr. Dundas, or some such name, had been drowned or murdered, or something, at Geneva; a relative of your wife's. What is the truth of it?"