"Your wife!" I cried in utter surprise and consternation.
That was exactly the effect he intended to produce and enjoyed producing. Amidst all his distress he found leisure to indulge his taste for administering shocks.
"You've always thought of me as a bachelor, haven't you? I suppose everybody thinks so—except one person. Well, it's no affair of theirs, and they've never chosen to inquire. I didn't mean to tell you, but the reference to her slipped out."
"You've had a wife all this time?" I gasped, sinking into a chair opposite to him.
He laughed openly at me. "Poor old Austin! No, it's not Powers over again." (So he knew about Powers!) "The poor child's been dead these twelve years."
I shrugged my shoulders impatiently. "Does it really amuse you to play the fool just now?"
"It amused me to make you jump." He watched me with a malicious grin for half a minute, then fell to prodding the coals again. "We were boy and girl—and I had only two years with her, and during that time I had the pleasure of seeing her nearly starve. I had no money and got very little work; in the usual way of things, I came into my little bit of money—it's precious little—too late. She was very pretty and a good girl, but not a lady by birth—no, not a lady, Austin. Consequently my folk—my respectable well-to-do folk—left her pretty nearly to starve—and me to look on at it. That's among the reasons why I'm so fond of respectable well-to-do people, why I have a natural inclination to acquiesce in their claim to all the virtues."
"Does Miss Driver know this?"
"Yes." He paused a moment. "She knows this—and a little more—which may or may not turn out material some day."
These words started my alarm afresh. Did he mean still to be in touch with Jenny, still to keep up communication with her—a hold on her—even though he went? If that were so, there was no end in sight, and no peace. The next instant he relieved me from that fear by adding in a low pensive voice, "But not while I live; we know each other no more after to-day."