‘You seem interested in my appearance,’ Mrs Bowden said after a very curt greeting.
‘Your face is familiar to me,’ I replied; ‘I think I must have seen you before.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ she returned in a tone that forbade further assertion of the point.
After a pause, she said: ‘So you are going to make an imprudent marriage, like your father.’
I fired up at this. ‘If I win as good a wife as my father did, I shall consider myself guilty of no imprudence,’ I said.
‘You are young and foolish. Money is a good thing.’
‘Yes, but only one of many good things. If I can have the others, I’ll dispense with it.’
‘You’ll find it difficult. If your father had not been so great a fool as you, you would have been a rich man to-day.’
‘In that case, I might never have met May, so I’m better as I am.—But tell me, madam, did you know my father?’
‘Yes, before you were born.—Don’t question me on the subject. I am tired now; go away. I’ll see you again another time—perhaps—I don’t know.’