“Oh, very well,” she rejoined, “Let’s get rowdy and sing the song ‘Love may go hang.’ When I’ve got it over with Dudley, we’ll just go straight on, keeping a good look out for the next fence. You’d better tell me something about this paternal husband of yours, just to prepare me for our meeting. He doesn’t put his knife in his mouth, and that sort of thing, does he?” “No; not quite so bad. His worst offence at present, I think, is to call me ‘wifey’.” “Wifey!” in accents of horror. “Lorraine, how awful!” “Yes; but I’m breaking him of it by degrees: that and his fondness for a soft felt hat.” They sat on chatting together with apparent gayness, but Hal’s heart was no lighter after she had duly been presented to the paternal husband, as she called him, and she journeyed solemnly home on a bus, feeling rather as if she had been to a funeral. She tried at first to hide her feelings from Dudley—no difficult matter at all, since he usually contributed little but a slightly absent “yes” and “no” to the conversation, and if the conversation languished he took small notice. However, he had to be told, and Hal rarely troubled to do much beating about the bush, so, in order to rouse him speedily and thoroughly, just as he was settling down to his newspaper she hurled the news at his head without any preliminary preparation. “What do you think Lorraine has done now? Been and gone and married a man old enough to be her father!” “Married!... Lorraine Vivian married!” Dudley’s newspaper went down suddenly on to his knee. Hal had squatted on the hearthrug, tailor fashion, before the fire, and she gave a little swaying movement backward and forward, to signify the affirmative. He looked at her a moment as if to make sure she was not joking, and then said, with sarcastic lips: “A man old enough to be her father?... then it isn’t even Rod Burrell!” “No; it isn’t even Rod Burrell.” “Some one with more money and influence, I suppose? Well, I don’t know that Burrell needs any one’s condolences.” “He does, badly.” “He won’t for long. The Burrells are a sensible lot, and no sensible man frets over a heartless woman.” “Lorraine is not a heartless woman. She has too much heart.” “She is certainly very generous with it.” “I don’t know which is the more detestable, a sarcastic man or a sensible one.” Hal shut her lips tightly, and stared at the fire. “I imagine you hardly expect any sort of man to admire Miss Vivian’s action.” “It doesn’t matter in the least what ‘any sort of man’ thinks. I am only concerned with the possibility that she will weary of matrimony quickly and be miserable. I told you, because I wanted you to hear it from me instead of from a newspaper.” Dudley suddenly grew more serious, as he realised how it must in a measure affect Hal also. “Who is he?” “He is a stockbroker, named Frank Raynor, aged fifty.” “And of course she married him for his money?” “I suppose so. Also he partly owns the Greenway Theatre.”