“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her yet. That was the finishing touch to our quarrel. I’ve promised Jack to go and see her. After all, Jack is my brother, and he put it in such a way that—well, I felt I wanted to see her. I suppose she will be too awful for words?”
He hesitated for a moment. He wondered why it jarred on him, the idea of her going to see Fay Morris. He had heard a good many stories about her, and he had several times come in contact with music-hall artistes—there had been some on the boat he went out on. But he was catholic in his tastes and mind, and personally he would never have drawn aside from contact with another human being. But Claudia with Fay Morris, Claudia in the Bohemian, over-heated atmosphere of the music-hall!
“Yes, I see, you think it will be all that. I suppose Jack is quite mad.”
He forced himself to be just. “I don’t think we can say that. You know, all sorts of stories go round about such people, and she may be quite—quite maligned. She is young, only twenty-two, and there’s every chance with youth, you know. She can’t be viciously fair, fat and forty. And you were always interested in humans, Claudia.”
“Oh, yes! I still am, more so than ever. If someone were just taking me to see her as a curiosity, it would be different. But, Colin, she’s my sister-in-law! Suppose she talks Cockney, and drops her aitches, and calls me ‘dearie’ or something!”
“Perhaps it won’t be as bad as that,” suggested Colin, not liking the picture at all, and wishing he could go with her. “What does Jack say about her?”
“Oh! nothing that tells you anything. And I can’t ask such questions of him, can I? Of course, Gilbert is furious at the idea of my going to see her. I think—I think he was going to forbid me to go and visit her, when you came in. What do you think?”
He hesitated, for he knew it was a ticklish matter to arbitrate, or attempt to do so, between husband and wife.
“I don’t need to think at all,” he said, after a pause. “You’re his sister, and you’ve got to do the thinking. And what you think should go, as the Americans say.”
“Ah!” She drew a deep breath and put her hand impulsively on his arm, a little trick she had with people she liked. “You are a real comfort, Colin. In future I shall throw all my problems on you.”