“No.”
Mr. Teal sighed. Roland could not help feeling that he was disappointing the old man a good deal.
“You do not, I suppose, chance to have a past?” asked Mr. Teal, not very hopefully. “I use the word in its technical sense. A deserted wife? Some poor creature you have treated shamefully?”
At the risk of sinking still further in the butler's esteem, Roland was compelled to answer in the negative.
“I was afraid not,” said Mr. Teal, shaking his head. “Thinking it all over yesterday, I said to myself, 'I'm afraid he wouldn't have one.' You don't look like the sort of gentleman who had done much with his time.”
“Thinking it over?”
“Not on your account, sir,” explained Mr. Teal. “On the family's. I disapproved of this match from the first. A man who has served a family as long as I have had the honor of serving his lordship's, comes to entertain a high regard for the family prestige. And, with no offense to yourself, sir, this would not have done.”
“Well, it looks as if it would have to do,” said Roland, gloomily. “I can't see any way out of it.”
“I can, sir. My niece at Aldershot.”
Mr. Teal wagged his head at him with a kind of priestly archness.