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"I am," I cried; "and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll settle five
thousand on Lucy and the children, so that they needn't accompany you
in your singing excursions. I shouldn't like them to catch cold, poor
dears, and ruin their voices."
In tones more than telephonically agonised he bade me not make a jest of
his misery. I nearly threw the receiver at the blockhead.
"I'm not jesting," I bawled; "I'm deadly serious. I knew Lucy before you
did, and I kissed her and she kissed me years before she knew of your
high existence; and if she had been a sensible woman she would have
married me instead of you--what? The first time you've heard of it? Of
course it is--and be decently thankful that you hear it now."
It is pleasant sometimes to tell the husbands of girls you have loved
exactly what you think of them; and I had loved Lucy Latimer. She came,
an English rose, to console me for the loss of my French _fleur-de-lis_,
Clothilde. Or was it the other way about? One does get so mixed in these
things.


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