"Well, I don't know! One can't trust one's madre. I shouldn't have been the least surprised."
"Oh—hum—well! Very distinguished man...."
"Oh, I like Challis very much. He's a most amusing companion. I wish that fool of a woman wouldn't make him so miserable."
"I understand she took offence at his showing you...."
"Showing me her letter! Yes—just fancy! Why—the letter was as good as a letter to me. It was nothing but a message to say why she wouldn't come to Royd.... No, really there was nothing else in it.... Well!—something illegible on the back that he had overlooked. And she would listen to no explanation, and went off in a fury, and took the children with her. And he's never seen her since."
"I can't believe she has any claim to the children. Has he taken legal advice?"
"Oh dear, yes! Heaps. But it seems he can do nothing. She was a half-sister of his first wife, you know. If he had married her in Australia, he might, they said, have got some legal remedy in Australia; but even then they thought he would have had a deal of trouble to get at the children. I think he has done wisely to let it alone. Frank says the Bill is sure to pass the Lords this year or next; probably this. Then she'll have to be his wife, whether she likes it or not. I've no patience with such folly."
The Baronet assumed the look of intense profundity political males generally wear in the presence of womankind, suggesting magazines of thought beyond their shallow comprehension. "Some—very—funny—questions," he said, in judicial instalments, "will arise if that Bill becomes Law. Ve-ry funny ones." But apparently too complex or too delicate for discussion with one's daughters. So the Bart. shut them into his soul with the closed lips of discretion, and looked responsible.
Perhaps Judith saw her way to quenching any suspicions anent herself and Challis by parading her unreluctance to talk about him. "I don't know," said she, "that a little trouble is necessarily bad for Challis, with all this success going on. It may save him from becoming odious. Besides, of course, Marianne means to come back to him in the end."