"I have a fixed idea that every man who wants to take out a patent and start a company, and is months about the job, is either a born idiot or a consummate rogue. I have a very poor opinion of this Mr. Crawford Number Two."
"Good gracious, John! aren't you very hard on a man you never saw?"
He nodded his head gravely at the fire, but took no other notice of her question. He puffed at his pipe a minute in silence, blowing the smoke straight out in front of him, as if in pursuit of some design. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth with one hand, waved away the banks of smoke lying before him with the other, and turning round to her, said:
"And, Kitty, I should not be at all surprised to find that he set fire to the house and then rescued the fool of a woman for reasons best known to himself."
Mrs. Farraday started to her feet aghast.
"Do you know, John, that you are saying the most awful things a man could say? You horrify me!"
"I mean," he went on, looking once more lazily into the fire, "that I think he set fire to the house and rescued the woman in order that he might have a claim upon her, and that he doesn't care a ---- for her, and that all he wants, or ever thought of, is her money."
"John, you do not know the man, and it is shameful of you to say such things, and you could be put in prison for saying them; and then to think of your calling the dearest creature alive 'that fool of a woman,' is worse than any libel you could speak of think of!"
The tears were in Mrs. Farraday's eyes, and she could hardly command her voice.
"Think over the matter. He knows this fool of a woman is a helpless invalid. He knows from you that you are coming here. He learns from you that there are two strange servants who sleep in the top of the house; and on the very night you are away, and the first night for years this elderly woman is sleeping alone, the house next door to which he lives takes fire; the kitchen over which she sleeps takes fire, and there is a great smell of paraffin oil in the place, although no one knew of any being in the house. And lo and behold you! when the woman is just dead, he comes, bursts in her window, and rescues her, and makes love to this well-off invalid woman--he who has come back to England at the age of thirty-five, without a fortune, and with a cock-and-bull story about a patent and a fibre."