"Oh, I'd a little bet up with a friend," said Marchmont, "that she'd been married at least a baker's dozen times. Ought I to hedge?"
"I think you're well inside the number," replied the actor.
"Gad! she must be pretty well acquainted with the divorce courts!" exclaimed the reporter.
"I'm quite sure she's never been divorced in her life," returned Spotts. "So long. I'm after a drink." And he left him, thus terminating the conversation.
"Ah," said the journalist to himself, "I bet you're the next in line, just the same."
Baffled in his first attempt, Marchmont sought other means of information, for there is always a weak spot in every defence, and a man of far less keen perception than the reporter would have had little difficulty in finding the most favourable point of attack. So it is not surprising that after a little cogitation he went in search of Miss Matilda, whom he had met the day before when he had returned with the party from the abbey. He found that lady on the lawn knitting socks for the heathen, and deserted for the nonce by the faithful Smith.
"Dear Miss Banborough," began the journalist, sitting down beside her, "what a reproach it is to idle men like myself to see such industry!"
"It's very kind of you, I'm sure, to notice my humble labours," replied the old lady, expanding at once under the first word of flattery. "My brother tells me you're connected with a great newspaper. How ennobling that must be! It gives you such a wide scope for doing good."
Marchmont, who had hardly adopted journalism for this purpose, and was conscious of having done his fair share of mischief in the world, made a desperate effort to look the part assigned to him, and murmuring something about the inspiration, to toilers like himself, of such self-sacrificing lives as hers, abruptly turned the conversation by alluding to the pleasure which she must have felt at her nephew's return.
"Of course we're very glad to have him back," acceded Miss Matilda. "But then we see little or nothing of him."
"Naturally," said the journalist, "his days must be given up to his friends. How you must be looking forward to the time when you can have him quite to yourself!"
The gleam that came into the old lady's eye at this remark told him that he had not been mistaken in fancying her hostile to the strangers, and he hastened to continue such a fruitful theme, saying: