"Why don't you wait a little while, and I'll tell you all the news," he said with an assumption of gaiety. "There have been several fashionable weddings——"
"Please tell me," she said, "Stafford. I've been for weeks under the influence of a drug, and somehow it has numbed pain, even mental pain, and perhaps you will never find me in a better condition to hear—the worst."
"The worst has happened, Maisie," he said gently.
"He has been arrested?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"No, dear, worse than that."
"Not—not suicide?" she said between her set teeth.
Again he shook his head. "He is dead," he said softly.
"Dead!"
There was a long silence which he did not break.