Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/69

 was allowing her twenty thousand a year for his liberty.”

Really and truly, the interest that total strangers take in other people’s affairs the moment that sinister word “divorce” is pronounced. . . Within two days the story was on every one’s lips : Spenworth was the one topic of conversation, and everything was known. I think it is called a petition for restitution. Alas! for twenty years it would always have been easy to produce evidence of Spenworth’s vagaries; now, I gathered, he was to “desert” Kathleen and then refuse to obey some order to come back. I don’t profess to understand the subject; it is wholly distasteful to me. . . “And what then?,” I asked.

“A decree nisi,” Will told me. “I gather my next aunt has been chosen already.”

I will not mention her name. She who marries a man that has been put away. . . Perhaps I take too lofty a view of human nature, knowing my brother-in-law as I do; but, until he actually marries her, I shall continue to look for a sign of grace.

“And now perhaps Cheniston is going to have an heir after all,” said Will.

I confess that I was thinking not at all of Cheniston at this season, though a second marriage may revolutionize everything. The