and you mayn't believe it when I've said
it, but--yes!--I'd rather he had never come home at all than come home
married, at his age, and to an Indian widow, whose first husband had
divorced her! I mean it, Duncan; I do indeed!"

"I am sure you do," said I. "It was just what I said to myself."

"To think of my Bob being Number Three!" murmured Catherine, with that
plaintive drollery of hers which I had found irresistible in the days of
old.

I was able to resist it now. "So those were the things you heard?" I
remarked.

"Yes," said Catherine; "haven't you heard them?"

"I didn't need. I knew her in India years ago."

Catherine's eyes opened.

"_You_ knew this Mrs. Lascelles?"

"Before that was her name. I have also met her original husband. If you
had known him, you would be less hard on her."

Catherine's eyes were still wide open. They were rather hard eyes, after
all. "Why did you not tell me you had known her, when you wrote?" she
asked.

"It wouldn't have done any good. I did what you wanted done, you know. I
thought that was enough."

"It was enough," echoed Catherine, with a quick return of grace. She
looked into the fire. "I don't want to be hard upon the poor thing,
Duncan! I know you think we women always are, upon each other. But to
have come back married--at his age--to even the nicest woman in the
world! It would have been madness ... ruination ... Duncan, T'm going to
say something else that may shock you."

"Say away," said I.

Her voice had fallen. She was looking at me very narrowly, as if to
measure the effect of her unspoken words.

"I am not so very sure about marriage," she went on, "at any age! Don't
misunderstand me ... I was very happy ... but I for one could never
marry again ... and I am not sure that I ever want to see Bob...."

Catherine had spoken very gently, looking once more in the fire; when
she ceased there was a space of utter silence in the little room. Then
her eyes came back furtively to mine; and presently they were twinkling
with their old staid merriment.

"But to be Number Three!" she said again. "My poor old Bob!"

And she smiled upon me, tenderly, from the depths of her alter-egoism.

"Well," I said, "he never will be."

"God forbid!" cried Catherine.

"He has forbidden. It will never happen."

"Is she dead?" asked Catherine, but not too quickly for common decency.
She was not one to pass such bounds.

"Not that I know of."

It was hard to repress