"See whom off?" Dick was mystified.
"My dear good nurse—the first and the best of my nurses—and her brother the Sergeant."
"Do you mean Compton?"
"Yes. They sail in the Rome to-morrow."
"So the brother," Dick thought to himself, "is taking the sister back to her own people, to be welcomed and forgiven, and to lead a better kind of life. Poor thing! poor thing! Perhaps her husband's death was the best thing that could have befallen her. She will be able to start afresh. She is a widow now."
Aloud, he only said: "I am glad—very glad to hear it."
"Did you know," said Alice, seeing that he was thinking more than he said, "that she was a widow?"
"Yes," said Dick.
It was plain to him that Alice did not know whose widow the poor woman was. She suspected no sort of bond between the woman who had nursed her and the man who had made love to her. She did not know the baseness of that love on his part. This was as it should be. She must never suspect; she must never, never know.
"Yes," said Dick slowly, "I knew that."