Page:No More Parades (Albert & Charles Boni).djvu/195

 His grief so shut him in on himself that she could say nothing to him

"You tell me he seduced the little Wannop girl The last person in the world he should have seduced Ain't there millions of other women He got you sold up, didn't he Along with keeping a girl in a tobacco-shop By jove, I almost lent him offered to lend him money on that occasion You can forgive a young man for going wrong with women We all do We've all set up girls in tobacco-shops in our time But, damn it all, if the fellow's a Socialist it puts a different complexion I could forgive him even for the little Wannop girl, if he wasn't  But  Good God, isn't it just the thing that a dirty-minded Socialist would do To seduce the daughter of his father's oldest friend, next to me Or perhaps Wannop was an older friend than me

He had calmed himself a little—and he was not such a fool. He looked at her now with a certain keenness in his blue eyes that showed no sign of age. He said:

"See here, Sylvia You aren't on terms with Christopher for all the good game you put up here this afternoon I shall have to go into this. It's a serious charge to bring against one of His Majesty's officers Women do say things against their husbands when they are not on good terms with them He went on to say that he did not say she wasn't justified. If Christopher had seduced the little Wannop girl it was enough to make her wish to harm him. He had always found her the soul of honour, straight as a die, straight as she rode to hounds. And if she wished to nag against her husband, even if in