"No," Vera said with accents of evident relief. "He is gone, but I don't know where he is gone. He never tells me."
Just for a moment Venner looked somewhat sternly at his companion. Here was an opportunity for an explanation too good to be lost.
"There is a little alcove at the end of the corridor," he said. "I see it is full of ferns and flowers. In fact, the very place for a confidence. Vera, whether you like it or not, I am going to have an explanation."
The girl shrank back, and every vestige of color faded from her face. Yet at the same time, the pleading, imploring eyes which she turned upon her companion's face were filled with the deepest affection. Badly as he had been treated, Venner could not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the woman who had become his wife. But he did not fail to realise that few men would have put up with conduct like this, however much in love they might have been. Therefore, the hand that he laid on Vera's arm was strong and firm, and she made no resistance as he led her in the direction of the little alcove.
"Now," he said. "Are you going to tell me why you left me so mysteriously on our wedding day? You merely went to change your dress, and you never returned. Am I to understand that at the very last moment you learned something that made it absolutely necessary for us to part? Do you really mean that?"
"Indeed, I do, Gerald," the girl said. "There was a letter waiting for me in my bedroom. It was a short letter, but long enough to wreck my happiness for all time."
"No, no," Venner cried; "not for all time. You asked me to trust you absolutely and implicitly, and I have done so. I believe every word that you say, and I am prepared to wait patiently enough till the good time comes. But I am not going to sit down quietly like this and see a pure life like yours wrecked for the sake of such a scoundrel as Fenwick. Surely it is not for his sake that you—"
"Oh, no," the girl cried. "My sacrifice is not for his sake at all, but for that of another whose life is bound up with his in the strangest possible way. When you first met me, Gerald, and asked me to be your wife, you did not display the faintest curiosity as to my past history. Why was that?"
"Why should I?" Venner demanded. "I am my own master, I have more money than I know what to do with and I have practically no relations to consider. You were all-sufficient for me; I loved you for your own sake alone; I cared nothing, and I care nothing still for your past. What I want to know is, how long this is going on?"
"That I cannot tell you," Vera said sadly. "You must go on trusting me, dear. You must—"