"Oh, Nina couldn't," Lady Bellingdown insisted. "I've seen a lot of her, and I could tell."
Lord Waltheof, who was the "tame cat" of the household, a tall, slim, dark man, reminded her that Mrs. Darling couldn't remember what happened.
"Oh, you're wrong about that, Wally," put in Charlotte Grey, the fair, thin bride of Sir George, who was up in town with Lord Bellingdown. "You're wrong about that. She didn't remember at first, but she does now. Nibbetts told me so. She remembers, but she doesn't speak of it. That is rather suspicious, you know."
"She's a widow without a sorrow," Kitty Bellingdown declared. "She never loved Darling; we all know that."
"She doesn't know what love is," asserted the bride, who was missing her husband terribly. "She has passion, but no affection."
"Has she been casting sheeps' eyes at Shucks?" It was Waltheof who asked. "Shucks" was Sir George's nursery name. It is a mark of the bluest blood to carry some such absurd nursery cognomen from the nursery to Eton, or Harrow, or Winchester, and then on to one or the other of the universities.
"She'd better not," Charlotte returned, her eyes snapping.
"I--I didn't know." And Waltheof slyly pinched Lady Bellingdown's shoulder as he stood behind her chair.
"I've always thought Nibbetts had a hand in it," Lord Waltheof ventured. "It was odd, his turning up just at that time, you must all admit that. Eight years he buried himself, God only knows where, and then all of a sudden he appears in Umballa, and the very next night poor Darling is mysteriously shot. Then back he comes to London and takes up the old life, just as if he had never been away and nothing had happened."
Lady Kitty nodded. "That's perfectly true," she said. "Does any one know where he was?"
"Yes," the tall man answered. "We all know generally. But only one man accurately. His solicitor was informed all the while. When I want a secret kept that's the man I'm going to employ."
"I'd see him right away if I were you," suggested Charlotte, and Lady Bellingdown frowned.
"I believe Nibbetts would marry Nina to-morrow if she'd say yes," Waltheof continued. "But she won't. She won't say yes to any man. Once was enough for her. That's flat."
"If he cares so much for her he has a poor way of showing it. I've never heard him give her a civil word." The bride spoke out of the richness of her experience.