e say Uncle Burton--Mr Cupples, you know-could tell you.
Some time ago he told me that he had met Mr Marlowe in London, and had
some talk with him. I changed the conversation.' She paused and smiled
with a trace of mischief. 'I rather wonder what you supposed had
happened to Mr Marlowe after you withdrew from the scene of the drama
that you had put together so much to your satisfaction.'

Trent flushed. 'Do you really want to know?' he said.

'I ask you,' she retorted quietly.

'You ask me to humiliate myself again, Mrs Manderson. Very well. I will
tell you what I thought I should most likely find when I returned to
London after my travels: that you had married Marlowe to live abroad.'

She heard him with unmoved composure. 'We certainly couldn't have
lived very comfortably in England on his money and mine,' she observed
thoughtfully. 'He had practically nothing then.'

He stared at her--'gaped', she told him some time afterwards. At the
moment she laughed with a little embarrassment.

'Dear me, Mr Trent! Have I said anything dreadful? You surely must
know.... I thought everybody understood by now.... I'm sure I've had to
explain it often enough... if I marry again I lose everything that my
husband left me.'

The effect of this speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant his
face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he
gradually drew himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. He
looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of
the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon.
But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, I had no
idea of it.'

'It is so,' she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger.
'Really, Mr Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing. I think I am
glad of it. For one thing, it has secured me--at least since it became
generally known--from a good many attentions of a kind that a woman in
my position has to put up with as a rule.'

'No doubt,' he said gravely. 'And... the other kind?'

She looked at him questioningly. 'Ah!' she laughed. 'The other kind
trouble me even less. I have not yet met a man silly enough to want
to marry a widow with a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits and
tastes, and nothing but the little my father left me.'

She shook her head, and something in the gesture shattered the last
remnants of Trent's self-possession.

'Haven't you, by Heaven!' he exclaimed, risi