“I thought you had retired from business,” said Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury, with a sniff that cracked a coffee-cup.
Bradbury Fisher looked at her coldly. She was a lean, pale-eyed woman with high cheek-bones, and for the hundredth time since she had come into his life he felt how intensely she needed a punch on the nose.
“Not altogether,” he said. “I still retain large interests in this and that, and I am at the moment occupied with affairs which I cannot mention without revealing secrets which might—which would—which are—Well, anyway, I’ve got to go to the office.”
“Oh, quite,” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What do you mean, quite?” demanded Bradbury.
“I mean just what I say. Quite!”
“Why quite?”
“Why not quite? I suppose I can say ‘Quite!’ can’t I?”
“Oh, quite,” said Bradbury.
He kissed his wife and left the room. He felt a little uneasy. There had been something in the woman’s manner which had caused him a vague foreboding.