"They had neither of them a cent; there was nothing for him to do but withdraw. And yet there is no doubt he broke her heart, though there is consumption in her family." Mrs. Cole knit her brows over this attempt on her part to formulate complete justice.
"He's a woman's man," said Andrew Cunningham. He had stepped to the mantel-piece to fill his pipe, and having uttered this fell speech, he lit it and smoked for some moments in silence with his back to the cheerful wood fire before proceeding. No one had seen fit to contradict him. The gaps between his assertions and the subsequent explanations thereof were expected and rarely interrupted. "He does everything well—rides, shoots, plays rackets, golf, cards—is infernally good-looking, as you say, has a pat speech and a flattering eye for every woman he looks at, and yet somehow he has always struck me as a poseur. I wouldn't trust him in a tight place, though he prides himself on his sporting blood. It may be prejudice on my part. Gerald likes him, I believe, because he is a keen rider and always has a good mount. He always has the best of everything going, but what does he live on anyway?"
"Wild oats, perhaps," suggested Marcy. But he hastened to atone for this levity by adding, "He had a little money from his mother, while it lasted, and just after he and Miss Wilford drifted apart, I am told that he followed a tip from Guy Perry on copper stocks and cleaned up enough to enable him to travel round the world."
"Poor Laura!" interjected Mrs. Cole. "What a pity he didn't get a tip earlier!"
"It wasn't enough to marry on," said Marcy, "and it's probably mostly gone by this time."
"That's the sort of thing I complain of," exclaimed Cunningham. "I'm no martinet in morals, Heaven knows, but I always feel a little on my guard with fellows who live by their wits and spend like princes. Confound it, you know it isn't quite respectable even in a free country." Andrew spoke with a wag of his head as though he expected to be adjudged an old fogy for this conservative utterance.
"He's an attractive fellow on the surface anyway," answered Marcy after a pause, "and will be an addition from the hunting standpoint. And—give the devil his due, Andrew—if he was looking for money only, there were several heiresses he might have married. That would have made him irreproachable at once."
Mrs. Cole drew a long breath. "Perfectly true, Mr. Marcy. I never thought of it before. Harry Spencer doesn't look at a woman twice unless he admires her, no matter how rich she is. He could have married several, of course, if he had tried."
"Dozens. That's the humiliating part of it," assented Mrs. Cunningham.