, already considerably mystified by Brixey’s strange proceedings, and wondering why he had conducted her to a retired nook in a dimly lighted corridor, wherein, thanks to screens and curtains, they were completely shut off from the gaze of mortal eye, turned on him with a glance of astonishment.
"Why do you ask that, Mr. Brixey?" she exclaimed. "To me—how could it belong to me?"
"Oh rot!" retorted Brixey. "Don’t let’s stand on ceremony. I mean, don’t let’s quibble about terms, you know. I feel this is a great occasion.
"There are all sorts of momentous events in the atmosphere. You and I, we’re momentous events, or personalities, or—or something! Perhaps I'm not quite clear!"
"Anything but!" said Georgina decisively.
Brixey made a desperate endeavour.
"Look here!" he said. "Let's try to be—I mean, let me try to be. You’ve been with these people ever since Sunday night, and when I came in just now, I saw, you were all in the thick of revelations.
"Has it come out that Mrs. Byfield was never legally married to Martin Byfield? That’s what I want to know. I’m on pins and needles to know it!"
"Then it has not come out!" answered Georgina with even more decision. "What has come out, undoubtedly, is that she was never legally married to that man Cradock Melsome. Therefore, she was legally carried to my uncle Martin."
"Fact?" asked Brixey.
"That’s what she brought that old clergyman here for," replied Georgina.
"Then the Byfield money, most of which I’ve just rescued from a couple of impudent thieves, is really hers and Fanshawe's!" demanded Brixey.
"I don’t think I'm wrong in saying—precisely so!" answered Georgina.
Brixey heaved a deep sign—unmistakably a sigh of immense relief.
"Hooray!" he said! "Delighted to hear it! Best news I've heard for a week."
Georgina turned a little in her seat and looked steadily at him.
"Why?" she exclaimed. "What on earth have you got to do with it? Or, rather, what on earth has it got to do with you? Aren't you a bit queer, Mr. Brixey?"
"I am a queer lot!" assented Brixey. "Odd, perhaps—I always was. But, the fact is, I—I wanted to speak to you."
"You are doing," remarked Georgina.
"To you—you!" continued Brixey, emphasising the personal pronoun. "That’s why I asked what I did just now. You see, I—the fact is, I have strong views on things in general."
"Yes?" remarked Georgina.
"On most things," asserted Brixey. "I—you must understand that I am by no means conventional. I neither do nor say things that other people say or do, usually!"
"For instance?" suggested Georgina.
"Yes, quite right," said Brixey. "I—you see, I have very queer ideas about—marriage!"
Georgina turned the full inquiry of her eyes on him.
"Yes!" declared Brixey. "Always had—at least, I mean, always since I arrived at years of discretion, you know."
"I hope," observed Georgina, looking thoughtfully at a corner of the convenient alcove, "I hope they aren’t very queer!"
"Well perhaps not particularly so," said Brixey "But they're mine! You see, I always felt that I could never marry a girl, you know, who had a lot of money—couldn't do it!"
"No?" remarked Georgina demurely. "You are, indeed, different from most young men, Mr. Brixey."
"Well, it's a fact!" assented Brixey. "Human nature—we're poor things. Now, can you think of anything more awful than the spectacle of a wife with, say, a hundred thousand pounds, and a husband with five pounds a week? Dreadful!"
"It depends how you look at it," remarked Georgina. "Some men who haven’t five shillings a week would be very thankful to get a wife who possessed a hundred thousand pounds!"
"Not men!" exclaimed Brixey. "Don’t call 'em men! They aren’t men, that sort! Call 'em parasites, leeches—anything but men. A man," he continued, "should be the rock on which the family's built! Those are my ideas."
"Yes?" replied Georgina, somewhat timidly.
"It’s not a week since we met—first," observed Brixey. "isn't that queer?"
"Is it?" asked Georgina.
"Seems so." asserted Brixey. "More like—like a long time, somehow. You came into my room at the Sentinel, didn't you?"
"Can't you remember?" inquired Georgina.
"Remember everything!" protested Brixey. "Then we travelled down to Selchester together. I say look here!"
"Well?" said Georgina.
"Now that this confounded business is wound up," said Brixey, "I've the best part of a longish holiday before me. What do you say if I finish it up at Selchester? I can, you know."
"Would you really like to?" asked Georgina, still more timidly.