Trent clasped his hands savagely together beneath the table. What could have happened? His ideas were sliding and shifting. At last he forced himself to put a direct question.
Mr. Bunner was not very fully informed. He knew that Mrs Manderson had left England immediately after the settlement of her husband's affairs, and had lived for some time in Italy. She had returned not long ago to London, where she had decided not to live in the house in Mayfair, and had bought a smaller one in the Hampstead neighbourhood; also, he understood, one somewhere in the country. She was said to go but little into society. 'And all the good hard dollars just waiting for some one to spraddle them around,' said Mr. Bunner, with a note of pathos in his voice. 'Why, she has money to burn–money to feed to the birds–and nothing doing. The old man left her more than half his wad. And think of the figure she might make in the world. She is beautiful, and she is the best woman I ever met, too. But she couldn't ever seem to get the habit of spending money the way it ought to be spent.'
His words now became a soliloquy: Trent's
