'Well, I thought she mightn't like me to come and see her, because,
I'm—well, on account of Dick.'
'There's nothing between them now; that's all over ages ago, and she's dead nuts on Bret.'
Kate had been nearly a fortnight with the mummers, but she had lived almost apart. She had not yet learnt that in the company she was in no opprobrium was attached to the fact of a woman having a lover, and she still supposed that because she had left her husband Leslie might not like to associate with her. To learn, then, that she had only replaced another woman in Dick's affections came upon her with a shock, and it was the very suddenness of the blow that saved her from half the pain; for it was impossible for a woman who saw in the world nothing but the sacrifice she had made for the man she loved, to realize the fact that Dick's love of her was a toy that had been taken up, just as love of Miss Leslie was a toy that had been laid down. It did not occur to her to think that the man she was living with might desert her, nor did she experience any very cruel pangs of jealousy; she was more startled than anything else by the appearance of a third person in the world which for the last week had seemed so entirely her own.
'What do you mean?' she said, stopping abruptly. 'Was Dick in love with
Miss Leslie before he knew me?'
Montgomery coloured, and strove to improvise excuses.
'No,' he said, 'of course he wasn't really in love with her; but we used to chaff him about her; that's all.'
'Why should you do that, when she is in love with Bret?' said Kate harshly.
Montgomery, who dreaded a quarrel with Dick as he would death, grasped at a bit of truth to help him out of his difficulty.
'But I assure you Bret and Leslie's affair only began a couple of months ago, when we first went out on tour. We joked Dick about her to vex him, that's all. If you don't believe me, you can ask the rest of the company.'
To this Kate made no reply, and with her eyes upon the ground she remained for some moments thinking. The light and the matter-of-course way in which her companion spoke of the affections troubled her exceedingly, and very naïvely she asked herself if the company did not admit fornication among the sins.