"The chairman mentioned Mallingbridge."
"What did he say about it?"
"He said that they might before long have to consider the propriety of building a new station, and putting it on another site."
"Why should they do that?"
"Why?" And again Mrs. Marsden smiled. "Why indeed? It set me thinking—and I read the speech carefully. Later on, the chairman spoke of the scheme for moving their carriage and engine works out of the London area. Well, I put those two hints together; and this is what I made of them. I believe that the company intend at last to develop all that land of theirs—the fields by the river,—and I prophesy that within three years they'll have built the new carriage works there."
She said this exactly as she used to say those luminously clever things that he remembered in the past. He listened wonderingly and admiringly.
But when the ladies left him alone to smoke his cigar or finish the wine that the guest had neglected, he sighed. She could give these flashes of the old logic and insight; she could talk so wisely about matters that in no way concerned her; but in the one great matter of her own life, where common sense was most desperately required, she had behaved like a lunatic.
He let his cigar go out, and he could not drink any more wine. Rain was pattering on the windows, and the wind moaned round the house—a sad dark night. He rang the bell, and told the servant to order a fly for Mrs. Marsden at a quarter to ten.
The fly took her home comfortably; and when she alighted at the bottom of St. Saviour's Court and offered the driver something more than his fare, he refused it.
"Mr. Prentice paid me, ma'am."