"Who is she?"
"She was a Miss Archer—an old maid; a Winchester woman who lost all her people and her money during the war. She then went to New York and opened a young ladies' school. Mrs. Wildfen was one of her pupils. She was doing very well until she committed the folly of marrying her servant, a man named Honey, an extremely handsome but ignorant cockney, and young enough to be her son."
"Dear me!" ejaculated Plowden.
"This naturally caused a scandal. Her pupils were withdrawn in a body, and the school was closed for want of patronage. And now my wife tells me she has returned to open a school in Winchester. You will meet them at dinner to-day; my wife asked them."
"That's strange, isn't it?"
"Yes, a most unfortunate complication for me, their being where my wife can—and she will—pump Mrs. Honey. It was to get the chance to do that, I fully believe, which made my wife invite them; hence the absolute need of my having some plausible story with which to satisfy Edna. You, by reason of your age and respectability, can better do this than anyone else."
"But, 'pon my soul, Rutherford," expostulated Plowden, "much as I would like to serve you, I'm afraid I can't. What can I say to your wife?"
"You can tell her that the girl was yours; that to hide her from your wife I secretly put her into the school, for you, under an assumed name."
"But what will my wife say—she who never suspected that I had a wife before her, much less a child?"
"Oh, it will be all right after Christmas. I can then square myself with my wife, and you can make a clean breast of it to yours."