“Well?”
“Will you tell me now, as we walk along, why my sister’s first marriage was kept a secret from me during all these years? Why even my chum in college, my fellow soldier in camp, never once mentioned the matter to me?”
“He has explained that in his case it was because no one spoke of it to him, and it was not his cue to be the first to allude to it.”
“But why? Why was all this mystery about a marriage that was honorable enough in itself?”
“Because there was a fatal misapprehension. I call it fatal, on account of the years of untold misery it entailed upon more than one.”
“Explain.”
“You remember, and can now at last appreciate, the dreary loneliness and isolation of your sister’s childhood and early youth at Weirdwaste?”
“Oh, yes! yes!”
“And the bewildering change that Brighton and a princely lover must have been to the hitherto solitary recluse of Weirdwaste?”
“Yes, yes!”