"No, please! Don't blame your wife. She has never _mentioned_ you,
except to pity and sympathise. Her one thought has been for you--how to
help, how to please. Of course, Mr Travers, the people here and myself
have only known you lately, and this illness must have been coming on
for some time. Probably it has--well, it has made you bad-tempered,
hasn't it? But your wife knew you before, when you were loving and
gentle, so her judgment must be more true."
With my usual "softness" I was beginning to pity the poor wretch, and to
try to let him down gently; but once again his face was eloquent. At
the words "loving and gentle," an involuntary grimace twisted the grim
features. Memory refused to reproduce the picture. He said abruptly:--
"My wife is a good woman. That virago of a matron told me this morning
that if she'd been in her place, she'd have run away years ago. Well,
Mary has stuck to me. She doesn't want to go! It's not always the
softest-spoken men who make the best husbands. That Hallett fellow,
whom Thorold is so thick with--he belongs to my club; I knew something
about him when I lived in America long ago. How do you suppose _he_
treated his wife?"
"His wife? He hasn't got a wife!"
"Oh, hasn't he? Not now, perhaps. But he had! A little of him went a
long way. She ran away from him on her honeymoon. What do you think of
that? What kind of a man can he have been to make a woman leave him in
a month?"
Something happened inside my head. There was a shock, a whirl, a
blinding darkness, followed by a flash of light. Mr Travers had said
"America," and the word had a terrible significance. I sat stunned into
silence, and Mr Travers obviously gloated over my discomfiture.
"Pretty condemning, eh? She was an heiress--pots of money.
Fine-looking girl, too. I saw her once. Too pale and washed out for my
taste, but with an air. Forget her name--something high-flown and
romantic, like herself. Well, she left him, and that was the end of it.
Never heard a word of her since."
Romantic name--an heiress--fine-looking--pale. One by one the clues
accumulated--step by step the evidence mounted up. I said faintly:--
"Has he tried?"
"Tried to find her? Searched the world! Almost went off his head, I
believe. He'd made a mess of it, of course, but he was crazy about
her--broken his heart ever since. You can see it in his face. My wife
has no patience with her. She'd married for better or worse. Whatever
happened, she was a poor thing to throw up the sponge in a month.
What's the matter? You look faint."
"I--I am! I must go. Some other day," I gasped vaguely. I went out
into the passage, and sat down on an oak chest. The world seemed
rocking around me. I was so stunned that I could _not feel_!