Captain Belliot shook his head with the air of a man who has been deceived in an honest endeavour to make the best of a bad lot, and is disheartened.
"She took me in completely," he said. "I should never have guessed she was that kind of woman. What is society coming to?"
"She must be deuced nasty-minded herself, you know, or she wouldn't have known Finchley had a woman out with him," said Major Livingston, whom Mrs. Guthrie Brimston called "Lady Betty" because of his nice precise little ways with ladies.
"Oh, trust a prude!" said Captain Brown. "They spy out all the beastliness that's going."
Colonel Colquhoun did not take this last proof of Evadne's peculiar views at all well. He was becoming even more sensitive as he grew older to what fellows say or think, and he was therefore considerably annoyed by her conduct, so much so, indeed, that he actually spoke to her upon the subject himself.
"People will say that I have married Mrs. Grundy," he grumbled.
"I suppose so," she answered tranquilly, "You see I do not feel at all about these things as you do. I wish you could feel as I do, but seeing that you cannot, it is fortunate, is it not, that we are not really married?"
"It sounds as if you were congratulating yourself upon the fact of our position," he said.
"But don't you congratulate yourself?" she answered in surprise. "Surely you have had as narrow an escape as I had? you would have been miserable too?"
He made no answer. It is perhaps easier to resign an inferior husband than a superior wife.