Mrs. Presty modestly acknowledged that she had only her own
experience to help her. "You wouldn't be quite so fond of other
people's children," she said, "if you were a married man. Ah,
your time will come yet--I mean your wife will come."

He answered this sadly. "My time has gone by. I have never had
the opportunities that have been granted to some favored men." He
thought of the favored man who had married Mrs. Norman. Was her
husband worthy of his happiness? "Is Mr. Norman with you at this
place?" the Captain asked.

Serious issues depended on the manner in which this question was
answered. For one moment, and for one moment only, Mrs. Presty
hesitated. Then (in her daughter's interest, of course) she put
Catherine in the position of a widow, in the least blamable of
all possible ways, by honestly owning the truth.

"There is no Mr. Norman," she said.

"Your daughter is a widow!" cried the Captain, perfectly unable
to control his delight at that discovery.

"What else should she be?" Mrs. Presty replied, facetiously.

What else, indeed! If "no Mr. Norman" meant (as it must surely
mean) that Mr. Norman was dead, and if the beautiful mother of
Kitty was an honest woman, her social position was beyond a
doubt. Captain Bennydeck felt a little ashamed of his own
impetuosity. Before he had made up his mind what to say next, the
unlucky waiter (doomed to be a cause of disturbance on that day)