Part 103 (1/2)

'I never understood Reardon so well before,' declared Whelpdale, at the close. 'This is a good thing well done. It's something to be proud of, Miss Dora.'

'Yes, I feel that it is,' she replied.

'Mrs Reardon ought to be very grateful to you, Milvain. By-the-by, do you ever see her?'

'I have met her only once since his death--by chance.'

'Of course she will marry again. I wonder who'll be the fortunate man?'

'Fortunate, do you think?' asked Dora quietly, without looking at him.

'Oh, I spoke rather cynically, I'm afraid,' Whelpdale hastened to reply.

'I was thinking of her money. Indeed, I knew Mrs Reardon only very slightly.'

'I don't think you need regret it,' Dora remarked.

'Oh, well, come, come!' put in her brother. 'We know very well that there was little enough blame on her side.'

'There was great blame!' Dora exclaimed. 'She behaved shamefully!

I wouldn't speak to her; I wouldn't sit down in her company!'

'Bos.h.!.+ What do you know about it? Wait till you are married to a man like Reardon, and reduced to utter penury.'

'Whoever my husband was, I would stand by him, if I starved to death.'

'If he ill-used you?'

'I am not talking of such cases. Mrs Reardon had never anything of the kind to fear. It was impossible for a man such as her husband to behave harshly. Her conduct was cowardly, faithless, unwomanly!'

'Trust one woman for thinking the worst of another,' observed Jasper with something like a sneer.

Dora gave him a look of strong disapproval; one might have suspected that brother and sister had before this fallen into disagreement on the delicate topic. Whelpdale felt obliged to interpose, and had of course no choice but to support the girl.

'I can only say,' he remarked with a smile, 'that Miss Dora takes a very n.o.ble point of view. One feels that a wife ought to be staunch. But it's so very unsafe to discuss matters in which one cannot know all the facts.'

'We know quite enough of the facts,' said Dora, with delightful pertinacity.

'Indeed, perhaps we do,' a.s.sented her slave. Then, turning to her brother, 'Well, once more I congratulate you. I shall talk of your article incessantly, as soon as it appears. And I shall pester every one of my acquaintances to buy Reardon's books--though it's no use to him, poor fellow. Still, he would have died more contentedly if he could have foreseen this. By-the-by, Biffen will be profoundly grateful to you, I'm sure.'

'I'm doing what I can for him, too. Run your eye over these slips.'

Whelpdale exhausted himself in terms of satisfaction.

'You deserve to get on, my dear fellow. In a few years you will be the Aristarchus of our literary world.'

When the visitor rose to depart, Jasper said he would walk a short distance with him. As soon as they had left the house, the future Aristarchus made a confidential communication.

'It may interest you to know that my sister Maud is shortly to be married.'