Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/140

128 with her is that she's quite making her preparations, by what he's convinced, for leaving him."

"Leaving him?"—he met it with treasures of surprise.

These were nothing, however, he could feel, to the wealth of authority with which she again gave it out. "Leaving him."

"A month after marriage?"

"A month after—their form; and she seems to think it handsome, he says, that she waited the month. That," she added, "is what he came above all that we should know."

He took in, our friend, many things in silence; but he presently had his comment. "We've done our job then to an even livelier tune than we could have hoped!"

Again this moral of it all didn't appear to shock her. "He doesn't reproach me," she wonderfully said.

"I'm sure it's very good of him then!" Traffle cried.

But her blandness, her mildness, was proof. "My dear Sidney, Walter is very good."

She brought it out as if she had made, quite unaided, the discovery; though even this, perhaps, was not what he most stared at. "Do you call him Walter?"

"Surely"—and she returned surprise for surprise—"isn't he my nephew?"

Traffle bethought himself. "You recognize the Registrar then for that."