The actor inclined his head in an acquiescent bow:
“She has.”
Again there was a pause. Unless Buford chose to be more biographical, the conversation appeared to have come to a deadlock. Neither of the listeners could at this stage break into his reserve with questions and yet to switch off on a new subject was not to be thought of at a moment of such emotional intensity. The actor evidently felt this, for he said suddenly, with a relapse into a lighter tone and letting his eyebrows escape from an overshadowing closeness to his eyes,
“But why should I trouble you with the sorrows that have cast their shadow on me? Why should my matrimonial troubles be allowed to darken the brightness of two young lives which have not yet known the joys and the perils of the wedded state?”
The pause that followed this remark was the most portentous that had yet fallen on the trio. Rose cast a surreptitious glance at the dark figure of young Ryan, lying back in the shadows of the arm-chair. As she looked he stirred and said with the abrupt, hard dryness which had marked his manner since Buford’s entrance,
“Don’t take too much for granted, Mr. Buford. I’ve known some of the joys and perils of the wedded state myself.”
The actor stared at him in open-eyed surprise.
“Do I rightly understand,” he said, “that you are a married man?”
“You do,” returned Dominick.
“Really now, I never would have guessed it! Pardon me for not having given you the full dues of your position. Your wife, I take it, has no knowledge of the risk she recently ran of losing her husband?”