"His will!" the Archdeacon repeated, somewhat startled. "Had he anything to leave?" He asked the question, rather in pity for so wretched a creature as the man seemed to him, than out of curiosity.
"If we may believe him," Jack said slowly, "and I think he was telling the truth, he was worth thirty thousand pounds."
"Impossible!" the Archdeacon cried.
"I do not know," replied Jack. "But we shall learn. He said he had made it in oil, and had come home a poor man to see how his wife and child would receive him. I do not think he was all bad," Jack continued thoughtfully. "There must have been a streak of romance in him."
"I fear," the Archdeacon muttered very sensibly, "that it is all romance!"
But it was not all romance; there is oil in the States yet, and Mr. Kent, of whom since he is dead we all speak with respect, by hook or crook had got his share. The thirty thousand pounds were discovered pleasantly fructifying in Argentine railways, and proved as many reasons why Mrs. Yale, when Jack's fate became known to her, should smile again. The Archdeacon put it neatly: To marry an actress is a grave offence because a common one, and one easily committed; but to marry an actress with thirty thousand pounds! Such ladies are not blackberries, not do they grow on every bush.
"Mr. and Mrs. John Yale have not yet established themselves at the Hall. They live at Henley, and their house is the summer resort of all kinds of people, among whom the Archdeacon is a very butterfly. An idea prevails--though a few of us are in the secret--that Mrs. Jack comes, in common with so many pretty women, of an old Irish family; and the other day I overheard an amusing scrap of conversation at her table. 'Mrs. Yale,' some one said, 'do you know that you remind me, I if may say it without offence, of Miss Kittie Latouche, the actress?'"
"Indeed?" the lady replied with a charming blush. "But do you know that you are on dangerous ground? My husband was in love with that lady before he knew me. And I believe that he regrets her now."
"Tit for tat!" cried Jack. "Let us all tell tales. If my wife was not in love with one Mr. Charles Williams a month--only a month--before she married me, I will eat her."
"Oh, Jack!" the lady exclaimed, covered with confusion. But this story would not be believed in Studbury, where Mrs. John passes for being a little shy, a little timid, and not a little prudish.