"I shall be delighted to come, if I can get away," he said.
"Your fascinating young widow is coming," I said, as a bait—though I felt that he had long ago lost interest in her.
"My widow?," he repeated. "I am alive—and unmarried, Lady Ann."
"Silly man! Our Brazilian heiress," I explained.
"Oh! Mrs. Sawyer," he said. "Is she Brazilian? I didn't know that. But it's not fair to embarrass her with my friendship. She is almost a stranger to me; I don't know that she's an heiress, I don't even know that she's a widow."
"But," I said, "surely her husband drank himself to death."
"Some one told me that he drank," said Major Blanstock. "Whether he drank himself to death I can't tell you. I didn't feel it was my affair..."
I forget whether any one was with us at the time, but this story spread... At least, it wasn't a story; several people, knowing nothing of the facts, had chosen to assume that a certain woman was a widow; one man, equally knowing nothing, said that he did not know whether she was a widow or not. Goodness me! Did it matter two pins one way or the other, so far as we were concerned? I should have been sorry to find out afterwards that there had been any kind of scandal, because one had thrown one's mantle over the woman and given an implied guarantee, as it were. That was why I did attempt to learn a little something from my diplomatic friends... But it is hardly too much to say that a panic ensued among the "Bunnies" and "Theos".
"They tell me," said Mr. "Bat" Shenstone, "that Mrs. Sawyer's husband is still living."
"Oh?," I said. That phrase—"They tell me"—! It always puts me on my guard.