“Then you can lay your hands upon it?” observed Simpson quietly.
“If I choose,” I said; “my wife is of age, and....”
“Of age!” echoed the admiral, throwing up his hands in amaze. “Why, I should have given the child fifteen at most!”
“She looks young,” I remarked coolly, while interiorly I was bursting with conceit; “but she is of age, so there is no reason in the world why I should bother myself or her about this confounded fortune; besides, I don't care a rap if I never see a penny of it!”
“Bravo, Clide! That's right, my boy!” cried my uncle, clapping me soundly on the back. “You're a chip of the old block, and it does my heart good to hear you. Why, when I was a youngster, ...”
“De Winton,” interrupted Sir Simon, “don't you think you had better retire to the piano? Simpson has not come down all the way from London to be entertained with the follies of your youth. It's most important that we should have his opinion about these matters; and if you can't hold your tongue or talk sense, you had better make yourself scarce.”
“Talk on,” said the admiral; “I won't hinder you.” And so they did. I sat there, feeling as if I were on my trial for some sort of misdemeanor, the nature of which was unknown to me, but the consequences of which would be probably appalling if the misdemeanor could be brought home to me. Sir Simon and my step-mother were judge and jury, Simpson was counsel for some mythical antagonist, and the admiral stood by in the capacity of a neutral but benevolent spectator. Both counsel and judge had been made acquainted [pg 743] by Mrs. de Winton with all she had to tell. How much or how little that might be, in Mrs. de Winton's opinion, I could not say. But clearly on some shallow inductive evidence she had made out a case vaguely unfavorable for my wife. No one accused her of anything. Not a word was said that my irritable pride could take hold of and resent. They spoke of her as a child whose innocence and ignorance made it doubly incumbent on them to legislate for and protect, since I was unfit for the duty, while my morbid delicacy they ignored as beneath contempt.
“We must keep him out of it altogether, I see,” observed Sir Simon when the conversation had lasted about half an hour. “Leave me to deal with the child. She won't suspect me of having married her for her money.”
There was no gainsaying this. Still, I was entering a protest against the way in which my wishes were being set at naught, when tea was brought in and cut me short.
“Go and see if Isabel be awake, Clide,” said my uncle, glad to put an end to the subject; “but don't disturb her if she's asleep. She's not to be worried for old fogies like us, mind.”