Ascott shrugged his shoulders: “That would make things no better!”
“But why?”
The young man assumed a still more despairing look as he looked in the other’s face and announced:
“My dear Bob, I must tell you all; Nini Guinon is enceinte.”
Ascott looked so crestfallen that, for all his phlegm, Tom Bob all but burst out laughing. However, he dissembled his feelings with wonderful self-restraint; rising, he stepped up to the young Englishman with an air of heartfelt sympathy and pressed his hand.
“My dear sir,” he declared, “you are a good and honest man!”
But Ascott had no illusions. “Or an idiot!” he groaned.
A silence followed, which the detective broke to say: “You will please excuse me, I must be going,” adding with a spice of irony:
“I won’t press you to have breakfast with me; I take it that after the wedding, a reception ...”
“No!” Ascott interrupted, “don’t make fun of me, Tom Bob; the ceremony will be strictly private; naturally it does not call for any festivities; the mother, who has to signify her consent, only comes to the Mairie and to church, and I have definitely refused to invite to the breakfast anyone whatsoever besides the witnesses.”