“Then you think it is the same old trouble that worries him?” said Barker in an awed and sympathetic voice.
“I believe it is,” said Stacy, with an equal feeling. Mrs. Barker pricked up her pretty ears; her husband's ready sympathy was familiar enough; but that this cold, practical Stacy should be moved at anything piqued her curiosity.
“And you believe that he has never got over it?” continued Barker.
“He had one chance, but he threw it away,” said Stacy energetically. “If, instead of going off to Europe by himself to brood over it, he had joined me in business, he'd have been another man.”
“But not Demorest,” said Barker quickly.
“What dreadful secret is this about Demorest?” said Mrs. Barker petulantly. “Is he ill?”
Both men were silent by their old common instinct. But it was Stacy who said “No” in a way that put any further questioning at an end, and Barker was grateful and for the moment disloyal to his Kitty.
It was with delight that Mrs. Barker had seen that the attention of the next table was directed to them, and that even Mrs. Horncastle had glanced from time to time at Stacy. But she was not prepared for the evident equal effect that Mrs. Horncastle had created upon Stacy. His cold face warmed, his critical eye softened; he asked her name. Mrs. Barker was voluble, prejudiced, and, it seemed, misinformed.
“I know it all,” said Stacy, with didactic emphasis. “Her husband was as bad as they make them. When her life had become intolerable WITH HIM, he tried to make it shameful WITHOUT HIM by abandoning her. She could get a divorce a dozen times over, but she won't.”
“I suppose that's what makes her so very attractive to gentlemen,” said Mrs. Barker ironically.