“I don’t go as far as that.”
“You mean that she is not married?”
“I don’t go so far as that.”
“Oh! the law!”
“Provoking, isn’t it, my dear? I can tell you, professionally, that (in my opinion) she has grounds to go on if she claims to be the man’s wife. That is what I meant by my answer; and, until we know more, that is all I can say.”
“When shall we know more? When shall we get the telegram?”
“Not for some hours yet. Come, and learn to play whist.”
“I think I would rather talk to Arnold, uncle, if you don’t mind.”
“By all means! But don’t talk to him about what I have been telling you to-night. He and Mr. Delamayn are old associates, remember; and he might blunder into telling his friend what his friend had better not know. Sad (isn’t it?) for me to be instilling these lessons of duplicity into the youthful mind. A wise person once said, ‘The older a man gets the worse he gets.’ That wise person, my dear, had me in his eye, and was perfectly right.”
He mitigated the pain of that confession with a pinch of snuff, and went to the whist table to wait until the end of the rubber gave him a place at the game.