Madame longed to say "Good old Bill," but again refrained. The story was beginning to amuse her.
"The Hon. William Toppys settled upon an island in the Torres Straits, and became what is called locally a beachcomber. This degradation was not forced upon him by poverty. He was not wealthy, but from his late mother he derived a competence--some few hundreds of pounds a year. We acted for his trustees, and regularly remitted his dividends to a bank in Thursday Island. Perhaps, Madame, it will assist you if I ring for an atlas."
"Do not trouble," said Madame sweetly. "I have a rough working acquaintance with geography. Thursday Island is a little to the north of Queensland. It is a centre for pearl fishing. That is why I remember the place."
"The Hon. William Toppys built himself a hut on a small islet in the Straits--and married a native woman. A Melanesian woman."
"Married?" enquired Madame. "How? Native fashion, _sans ceremonie_?"
"Unhappily, no. His marriage was celebrated and registered at the Melanesian Mission's station on Thursday Island. It was--I repeat unhappily--as legal a contract as your own marriage."
"You shock me," said Madame primly, though she struggled against laughter. "Would you have had the Hon. William Toppys live--in sin--with a native woman?"
Madame covered her face with her hands and her silks--her businesslike silks--rustled with emotion.
"It pains me to express sentiments which you must regard as immoral"--the silks went on rustling--"but I must look at that fatal marriage from the point of view, the just point of view, of the ancient family of Toppys."
"Pronounced Tops," whispered Madame, as she came up to breathe.
"The Hon. William Toppys sent us word of his marriage. That was nearly twenty years ago. He also, with unparalleled effrontery, communicated to his brother, the late Lord Topsham, the dates of birth of his son and his two daughters. Those births were all registered in due form at Thursday Island. If the Hon. William Toppys had designed to humiliate, to outrage, the most ancient and honourable Family in Devon--save only that of the Courtenays--he could not have gone about the business more thoroughly or systematically. He is dead. He died in 1912. But I cannot speak good of the dead. He committed a crime, a series of crimes. He lawfully married a Melanesian woman and he lawfully begat a son and heir!"