For a minute or two there was silence.
"What have you told him ?" Lilian asked at length, in an undertone.
"Why, simply that I have had reasons for keeping my marriage secret." He spoke in a blunt, authoritative way, but with his usual kindly smile.
"I thought it better," he added, "after that chance meeting the other day.

He's a fellow one can trust, I assure you.

Thoroughly good-hearted.

As you know, I don't readily make friends, and I'm the last man to give my confidence to any one who doesn't deserve it.

But Glazzard and I have always understood each other pretty well, and--at all events, he knows me well enough to be satisfied with as much as I choose to tell him." Quarrier had the air of a man who, without any vulgar patronage, and in a spirit of abundant good-nature, classifies his acquaintance in various degrees of subordination to himself.