"Only that I thought he seemed rather friendly with your little wife," she explained.
"Oh, with Marie!" Chris laughed. "Yes, I'm glad to say he is. They get on very well together. He saved her life, you know."
"Of course! How stupid of me!" She pretended that she had forgotten, and Chris frowned.
59 "Why on earth can't the woman be natural?" he was thinking impatiently. He had quite missed her venomous little shaft with regard to his wife and Feathers. His was a most unsuspicious nature, and he cared too little for Marie to feel the slightest jealousy.
He had laughed at Atkins' devotion to her. Atkins was a young idiot, but he had been pleased that she and Feathers had taken such a liking to one another. It argued well for a future in which Chris could see himself wanting to knock about town with Feathers as he had done before he was married.
They played a round of golf, and Mrs. Heriot beat him.
"What a triumph!" she said mockingly, when they sat down to rest on a grassy slope. "You're not playing well to-day, Chris."
She had always called him by his Christian name. She was one of those women who call all men by their Christian names without first being invited to do so.
She was a widow with a large income, and a spiteful nature. She did not actually wish to re-marry, because if she did so she would lose the money left her by her husband, but all the same, she did not like to see her men friends monopolized and married by other women.
She was thinking of her husband now, as she sat, chin on hand, staring down at Chris, sprawled beside her on the grass.