Page:Bentley- Trent's Last Case (Nelson, nd).djvu/265

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ERUPTION.
257

any one in the world ever guessed what my husband's notion was. People who know me don't think that sort of thing about me, I believe. And his fancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts. I will tell you what the situation was. Mr. Marlowe and I had been friendly enough since he came to us. For all his cleverness–my husband said he had a keener brain than any man he knew–I looked upon him as practically a boy. You know I am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack of ambition that made me feel it the more. One day my husband asked me what I thought was the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much about it I said, "His manners." He surprised me very much by looking black at that, and after a silence he said, "Yes, Marlowe is a gentleman; that's so", not looking at me.

'Nothing was ever said about that again until about a year ago, when I found that Mr. Marlowe had done what I always expected he would do–fallen desperately in love with an American girl. But to my disgust he had picked out the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all those whom we used to meet. She was