No wonder her eyes had flashed at the prospect of a fortune of her own....
An even less welcome ray illuminated his mind at this point.

His wife was not unversed in the arts of dissimulation herself.

True, she was French and took naturally to diplomatic wiles; true, also, the instinct of self-preservation in even younger members of a sex that man in his centuries of power had made, superficially, the weaker, was rarely inert.
What woman would wish her husband to know disgraceful ancestral secrets which were no fault of hers?
A much older woman would not be above entombing them, if the fates were kind.

But it saddened him to think that his wife should be rushed to maturity along the devious way.

Poor child, he must win her confidence as quickly as his limping wits would permit and shift her burden to his own shoulders.
Having learned through the medium of the house telephone that his mother-in-law had departed, he knocked at his wife's door.