A sudden suspicion of him turned her cold. Had he stolen the diamonds? She was on the point of sending for a cab, and driving it to his lodgings, when James came in, eager to know if the interpretation had arrived.
Keeping her suspicions to herself, she merely informed him that the interpretation was in her hands. He at once asked to see it. She refused to show it to him until he had made her his wife. “Put a chisel in your pocket, when we go to church, to-morrow morning,” was the one hint she gave him. As thoroughly worthy of each other as ever, the betrothed lovers distrusted each other to the last.
At eleven o’clock the next morning they were united in the bonds of wedlock; the landlord and the landlady of the public-house in which they had both served being the only witnesses present. The children were not permitted to see the ceremony. On leaving the church door, the married pair began their honeymoon by driving to St. John’s Wood.
A dirty printed notice, in a broken window, announced that the House was To Let; and a sour-tempered woman informed them that they were free to look at the rooms.
The bride was in the best of humors. She set the bridegroom the example of keeping up appearances by examining the dilapidated house first. This done, she said sweetly to the person in charge, “May we look at the garden?”
The woman made a strange answer to this request. “That’s curious,” she said.
James interfered for the first time. “What’s curious?” he asked roughly.
“Among all the idle people who have come here, at one time or another, to see this house,” the woman said, “only two have wanted to look at the garden.”
James turned on his heel, and made for the summer-house, leaving it to his wife to pursue the subject or not as she pleased. She did pursue the subject.
“I am one of the persons, of course,” she said. “Who is the other?”