‘To be candid with you, I was not,’ Edgar replied, urged by some strange impulse to confide in the American. ‘I am a university man without money. My history is a common one. Educated at a public school, and afterwards at Cambridge, I am expected to get a living in some mysterious way. All my little money was spent upon my education, and then I had to shift for myself. Much good my second-class honours have done me.’
‘Then, to prove your wisdom, you got married?’
‘Of course. But now comes the most remarkable part of my story. My wife was her uncle’s heiress—not that her money was any inducement to me—and I was engaged to her with his approval. It was arranged I was to manage his property, and we were to live with him. Then a relative of his—a lady—came to stay, and everything went wrong from that time. Finally, acting under the lady’s wonderful fascination, my wife’s uncle forbade our marriage, and ordered her to marry a nephew of the lady’s. This, of course, she refused to do, and was consequently disinherited.’
‘What sort of a seraph was the lady?’ asked Mr Slimm, with considerable interest.
‘Don’t mention her, pray. She had the evil-eye, if ever woman had.—But to continue. After our wedding, we came to London, and at different times tried to bring about a reconciliation; but to no effect. Then the old gentleman died.’
‘A common story enough; but considerable rough on you and your wife,’ said Mr Slimm.
‘After that, a most remarkable occurrence happened. When the will was proved, not a sixpence of the old gentleman’s money could be found—that is, excepting the few hundreds in the local bank for household expenses. It is four years ago now, and to this day not one farthing has turned up.’
‘Penny plain, and twopence coloured,’ the American said sententiously—‘to be continued in our next. There’s the making of a sound family romance about this.—Anything more?’
‘A little. An old companion of my wife’s turned up the other day—or I should say my wife found her accidentally in London. She was standing in the rain on Waterloo Bridge, looking into the water.—You comprehend, don’t you?’
‘“One more unfortunate, weary of breath,”’ quoted Mr Slimm with a tender inflection which surprised Edgar. ‘Go on.’