"Oh, not at all," I assured him.
"Well, as I was saying," he pursued, "give her time to marry again. That would be the most satisfactory settlement of her difficulties. She is, I quite agree with you, a very attractive person. Now, there is the Duke of Panama already, Lady Adeline says—but she seems to have an objection to princes, especially if they are at all obese. I do not like obese people myself. Now, do you ever feel nervous on that score?"
"What score?"
"The score of obesity. You are just nicely proportioned at present for a man of your age and height. I, of course, am far too slender. But if you were to get any stouter by and by, it would be such a dreadful thing! I hope flesh is not in your family on both sides. On one I know it is. Now, my people are all slender. There is a great deal in that, I notice."
He was doing up the documents now with much neatness and dexterity.
"These had better go to my lawyer," he remarked.
"Why not to mine?" I suggested.
"Oh, allow me," he said, with great suavity—"as the older man. Of course, as a question of right, we neither of us have any claim to the privilege of being allowed to help this lady. Eventually, however, one of us may secure the right; but there is many a slip, you know, and perhaps it would be less awkward afterward if a person whose disinterestedness is quite above suspicion had had the direction of affairs from the first."
There could be no doubt of what he meant by this time, and the argument was unanswerable.
"Do you feel inclined to return with me to Mentone?" he asked.