his morning? There's nothing in it.
Dearth of real news is, I suppose, responsible for this?" and he
pointed, frowning as he spoke, to a column on the middle page headed,
"The Garvice Mystery. New Developments."

Again a shrewd, good-humoured smile quivered on his son's firm mouth.
"In these days newspapers have to follow, not lead, the public taste.
Very few people are honestly as indifferent as you are, father, to
that sort of story. Now, even I, who never met poor old Garvice,
cannot help wondering how he came by his death; and yet you, who knew
the man----"

"I knew him," said the other with a touch of impatience, "as I know,
and as you know, dozens of our fellow-townsmen."

"Never mind; you, at any rate, can put a face to the man's name; and
yet the question as to whether he was or was not poisoned by his wife
is one of indifference to you! Now I submit that in this indifference
you are really a little--" he hesitated for a word, but found that
none so well expressed his thought as that which had first risen to
his lips--"peculiar, father."

"Am I?" said Thomas Carden slowly; "am I so, Theodore? Nay, nay, I
deny that I am indifferent! Lane"--Major Lane was at that time Head
Constable of Birmingham, and a life-long friend of the speaker--"Lane
was quite full of it last night. He insisted on telling me all the
details of the affair, and what shocked me, my boy, was not so much
the question which, of course, occupied Lane--that is, as to whether
that unhappy young woman poisoned her husband or not--but the whole
state of things which he disclosed about them. Lane told me certain
facts concerning Garvice, who, as you truly say, I have known, in a
sense, for years, which I should not have thought possible of any
man--vile things, which should have prevented his thinking of
marriage, especially of marriage with a young wife."

Theodore Carden remained silent; he never discussed unsavory subjects
with his father. Moreover, he had no liking for Major Lane, though he
regarded him with considerable respect, and even with a feeling of
gratitude. Some years before, the Head Constable had helped the young
man out of a serious scrape, the one real scrape--so Carden was
complaisantly able to assure himself--engendered by his systematic
pursuit of women. Even now he could not recall, without wincing, the
interview he had had on that occasion with his father's friend. During
that interview Carden had felt himself thoroughly c