woman’—to accuse her ‘dear husband’! The sooner I left her house the better. So I’m off.”
“But not now?”
“This minute!”
For a moment we sat and stared at her. Finally John Cavendish, finding his persuasions of no avail, went off to look up the trains. His wife followed him, murmuring something about persuading Mrs. Inglethorp to think better of it.
As she left the room, Miss Howard’s face changed. She leant towards me eagerly.
“Mr. Hastings, you’re honest. I can trust you?”
I was a little
myself that my first judgments are usually fairly shrewd.
Presently Mrs. Inglethorp turned to give some instructions about letters to Evelyn Howard, and her husband addressed me in his painstaking voice:
“Is soldiering your regular profession, Mr. Hastings?”
“No, before the war I was in Lloyd’s.”