"His wife!" cried Nancy Ellen. "But you said—"
"So I did," said Kate. "And so he did. Since the wife loomed on the horizon, I remembered that he said no word to me of marriage; he merely said he always had loved me and always would—"
"Merely?" scoffed Nancy Ellen. "Merely!"
"Just 'merely,'" said Kate. "He didn't lay a finger on me; he didn't ask me to marry him; he just merely met me after a long separation, and told me that he still loved me."
"The brute!" said Nancy Ellen. "He should be killed."
"I can't see it," said Kate. "He did nothing ungentlemanly. If we jumped to wrong conclusions that was not his fault. I doubt if he remembered or thought at all of his marriage. It wouldn't be much to forget. I am fresh from an interview with his wife. She's an old acquaintance of mine. I once secured her for his mother's maid. You've heard me speak of her."
"Impossible! John Jardine would not do that!" cried Nancy Ellen.
"There's a family to prove it," said Kate. "Jennie admits that she studied him, taught him, made herself indispensable to him, and a few weeks after his mother's passing, married him, after he had told her he did not love her and never could. I feel sorry for him."
"Sure! Poor defrauded creature!" said Nancy Ellen. "What about her?"
"Nothing, so far as I can see," said Kate. "By her own account she was responsible. She should have kept in her own class."