She smiled at him with her basking candour. "I used to. That's my
husband," she added, with an odd, though evidently accidental,
inconsequence. She had reached out to a table for a photograph in a
silver frame. "He was very good to me."
Maurice saw that Mr. Tregent had been many years older than his wife--a
prosperous, prosaic, parliamentary person whom she couldn't impose on a
man of the world. He sat an hour, and they talked of the mutilated
season of their youth: he wondered at the things she remembered. In this
little hour he felt his situation change--something strange and
important take place: he seemed to see why he had come back to England.
But there was an implication that worried him--it was in the very air, a
reverberation of that old assurance of his mother's. He wished to clear
the question up--it would matter for the beginning of a new friendship.
Had she had any sense of injury when he took to his heels, any glimpse
of the understanding on which he had begun to come to Ennismore Gardens?
He couldn't find out to-day except by asking her, which, at their time
of life, after so many years and consolations, would be legitimate and
even amusing. When he took leave of her he held her hand a moment,
hesitating; then he brought out:
"Did they ever tell you--a hundred years ago--that between your mother
and mine there was a great question of our marrying?"