"Enoch Arden!" suggested Greene contemptuously.
"Precisely the same thing. The man had been living somewhere near San Francisco. After he came back he found his wife had married an old friend of his—a very good fellow. He would not break her heart, so he went off to live by himself in the Rockies."
"I wish you would stop!" exclaimed Brett, almost livid.
"I wonder it does not strike you in the same way," continued Mr. Brown, unmoved. "You are a lawyer, Vanbrugh. Now just argue the case, and meet my points."
"Well really, you do put the case pretty strongly," answered Vanbrugh thoughtfully. "If you look at it in that way, there certainly is a bare shadow of a possibility that Darche may have come back."
"Good God, Vanbrugh, don't!" cried Brett.
"I cannot quite help it." Vanbrugh drew Brown a little aside and spoke in a lower tone, but Brett, who could scarcely control himself, moved up behind them. "Look here, Brown," said Vanbrugh, "we ought not to talk like this before Brett. After all, it is a mere possibility, one chance in a thousand."
"Considering the peculiarities of the name," argued Mr. Brown, "there are more chances than that."
"Possibly. But why should he go to the newspaper office instead of hiding altogether, or getting away from New York by the next steamer?"
"That is true," assented Mr. Brown.