Langholm, however, who was better
qualified to appreciate the vicar's point, took no notice of it.
"If it was not the judge," said he, "who in the world is it who has
sprung this mine, I saw them meet, and as a matter of fact I did guess
the truth. But I had special reasons. I had thought, God forgive me, of
making something out of your wife's case, Steel, little dreaming it was
hers, though I knew it had no ordinary fascination for her. But no one
else can have known that."
"You talked it over with her, however?"
And Steel had both black eyes upon the novelist, who made his innocent
admission with an embarrassment due entirely to their unnecessarily
piercing scrutiny.
"You talked it over with her," repeated Steel, this time in dry
statement of fact, "at least on one occasion, in the presence of a lady
who had a prior claim upon your conversation. That lady was Mrs. Vinson,
and it is she who ought to have a millstone hanged about her neck, and
be cast into the sea. Don't look as though you deserved the same fate,
Langholm! It would have been better, perhaps, if you had paid more
attention to Vinson's wife and less to mine; but she is the last woman
in the world to blame you--naturally! And now, if you are ready, we will
join them, Woodgate.
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