R III.

THE COURTENAYS.

I determined to spend that evening at Richmond Road with open eyes.

The house was a large red-brick one, modern, gabled, and typically
suburban. Mr. Courtenay, although a wealthy man with a large estate in
Devonshire and extensive properties in Canada, where as a young man he
had amassed a large fortune, lived in that London suburb in order to
be near his old friends. Besides, his wife was young and objected to
being buried in the country. With her husband an invalid she was
unable to entertain, therefore she had found the country dull very
soon after her marriage and gladly welcomed removal to London, even
though they sank their individuality in becoming suburban residents.

Short, the prim manservant, who admitted me, showed me at once up to
his master's room, and I stayed for half-an-hour with him. He was
sitting before the fire in a padded dressing gown, a rather thick-set
figure with grey hair, wan cheeks, and bright eyes. The hand he gave
me was chill and bony, yet I saw plainly that he was much better than
when I had last seen him. He was up, and that was a distinctly good
sign. I examined him, questioned him, and as far as I could make out
he was, contrary to my chief's opinion, very much improved.

Indeed, he spoke quite gaily, offered me a whisky and soda, and made
me tell him the stories I had heard an hour earlier at the Savage. The
poor old fellow was suffering from that most malignant disease, cancer
of the tongue, which had caused him to develop peripheral neuritis.
His doctors had recommended an operation, but knowing it to be a very
serious one he had declined it, and as he had suffered great pain and
inconvenience he had taken to drink heavily. He was a lonely man, and
I often pitied him. A doctor can very quickly tell whether domestic
felicity reigns in a household, and I had long ago seen that with the
difference of age between Mrs. Courtenay and her husband--he sixty-two
and she only twenty-nine--they had but few ideas in common.

That she nursed him tenderly I was well aware, but from her manner I
had long ago detected that her devotedness was only assumed in order
to humour him, and that she possessed little or no real affection for
him. Nor was it much wonder, after all. A smart young woman, fond of
society and amusement, is never the kind of wife for a snappy invalid
of old Courtenay's type. She had married him, some five years before,
for his money, her unchari