The parlour-maid came back into the room.
“Yes, Mr. Smith apparently went up to the club at half-past ten,” she said. “But he can’t have gone to the club, for in that case you would have seen him. It has occurred to me that he didn’t feel well, and went to the doctor’s.”
“It seems possible,” said Mr. Altham, not without enthusiasm, understanding that “doctor” meant “doctor,” and which doctor.
“We have all noticed how many visits he has been paying to--to Dr. Jones,” said Mrs. Altham, “during the time Mrs. Smith was away. But to pay another one on the very evening of her return looks as if--as if something serious was the matter.”
“My dear, there’s nothing whatever to show that Major Ames went to the doctor’s last night,” he said.
Mrs. Altham gave him an awful glance, for the parlour-maid was in the room, and this thoughtless remark rendered all the diplomatic substitution of another nomenclature entirely void and useless.
“Mrs. Smith, I should say,” added Mr. Altham in some confusion, proceeding to make it all quite clear to Jane, in case she had any doubts about it.
“Suggest to me any other reasonable theory as to where he was, then,” said Mrs. Altham.
“I can’t suggest where he was, my dear,” said Mr. Altham, finding his legal training supported him, “considering that there is no evidence of any kind that bears upon the matter. But to know that a man was not in one given place does not show with any positiveness that he was at any other given place.”
“No doubt, then, he went shopping at half-past ten last night,” said Mrs. Altham, with deep sarcasm. “There are so many shops open then. The High Street is a perfect blaze of light.”
Mr. Altham could be sarcastic, too, though he seldom exercised this gift.
Mrs. Altham no doubt was vexed at her husband’s sceptical attitude, and she punished him by refraining from discussing the point any further, and from giving him the rest of her news. But this severity punished herself also, for she was bursting to tell him. When Jane had finally withdrawn, the internal pressure became irresistible.
“Mrs. Ames has done something to her hair, Henry,” she said; “and she has done something to her face. I had a good mind to ask her what she had used. I assure you there was not a grey hair left anywhere, and a fortnight ago she was as grey as a coot!”