Morley Roberts

“ I looked forward so much to having you here and telling you about my dear husband. After all, though I never understood governing and politics or diplomacy, I understood his inner character as a wife only can. ”

“ And yet she more often looked at Hector than at the man who obviously loved her.
“Tell me about Lady Anne Pulleine,” he said, when every one had tea and Lady Hale was chattering to Hector about Sir George with a cheerful kind of mournfulness.
He noticed at once that Felicia did not like this Lady Anne. Her cold praise of her beauty showed this plainly enough, but when he spoke she grew more rigid. It was the attitude natural to a very good young woman when discussing some one not obviously good. Courtney knew that attitude, and had often smiled at it, as a quiet man must at ignorance. ”

“ Where are the keys, Felicia? Oh, here they are. Now, Hector, there is one key missing, and the most important one. It is the key to the cabinet. Have you got it?”
Hector shook his head, and answered with curious dryness:
“No, Lady Hale, it is not in my possession.”
“Dear me,” said Lady Hale, “and I thought you must have it. He trusted you so completely about these important matters, diplomacy and so on, and what the dear man jokingly called his incriminating documents. He said that in a long public career a man accumulated a lot of papers very useful in making people do their duty. ”