“Why, certainly, good old heart. What else?”      

       “Have you been married to her all the time?”      

       “Why, certainly, good, dear boy.”      

       The room swam before Roland's eyes. There was no room in his mind for meditations on the perfidy of woman. He groped forward and found Bombito's hand.     

       “By Jove,” he said thickly, as he wrung it again and again, “I knew you were a good sort the first time I saw you. Have a drink or something. Have a cigar or something. Have something, anyway, and sit down and tell me all about it.”      

  

       THE EPISODE OF THE HIRED PAST     

       Final Story of the Series [First published in Pictorial Review, October 1916]     

       “What do you mean—you can't marry him after all? After all what? Why can't you marry him? You are perfectly childish.”      

       Lord Evenwood's gentle voice, which had in its time lulled the House of Peers to slumber more often than any voice ever heard in the Gilded Chamber, had in it a note of unwonted, but quite justifiable, irritation. If there was one thing more than another that Lord Evenwood disliked, it was any interference with arrangements already made.     

       “The man,” he continued, “is not unsightly. The man is not conspicuously vulgar. The man does not eat peas with his knife. The man pronounces his aitches with meticulous care and accuracy. The man, moreover, is worth rather more than a quarter of a million pounds. I repeat, you are childish!”      

       “Yes, I know he's a very decent little chap, Father,” said Lady Eva. “It's not that at all.”      

       “I should be gratified, then, to hear what, in your opinion, it is.”      

       “Well, do you think I could be happy with him?”      

       Lady Kimbuck gave tongue. She was Lord Evenwood's sister. She spent a very happy widowhood interfering in the affairs of the various branches of her family.     

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