“It was very unfortunate, certainly.” He kept his eyes on the bacon, while he prodded it about with a fork. “Damnably unfortunate.”
“So odd and so unfortunate that I cannot help thinking there may have been a reason for it!”
Lathom took two eggs and cracked them carefully. “How so?”
“You are aware, perhaps, that my father was—not altogether happy in his married life.”
He gave an exclamation under his breath.
“Did you speak?”
“No—I have broken the yolk, that’s all. I beg your pardon. You are asking me rather a delicate question.”
“You may speak frankly to me, Mr. Lathom. If you saw much of my father’s family life, you must have noticed that there were—misfits.”
“Well, of course—one sees and hears little things occasionally. But many happily-married people spar at times, don’t they? And—well—there was a difference of age and all that.”
“That is the point, Mr. Lathom. Without necessarily saying anything harsh about my father’s wife, it is a fact that a young woman, married to an older man, may, not unnaturally, tend to turn to someone more of her own age.”
He muttered something.
“In such a case my father, who was the most unself-regarding man who ever breathed, might have thought it his duty to give her back her liberty.”
He turned round swiftly.