"Because—because I was thinking, just thinking. Are you certain you remember nothing about it, not even the man's name, nor what sort of man he was, nor what he did, nor anything?"
"I only know what you must know. Randall Teevan's wife decided that the Bishop had made two into the wrong one. I doubt if I ever heard the chap's name. I seem to remember that they took Alden with them—he was a baby of four or five, I believe, and that Randy scurried about and got him back after no end of fuss. I've heard dad speak of that."
"Did Kitty and that man ever marry?"
"No; you can be sure Teevan saw to that. He took precious good care not to divorce her. They manage those things more politely nowadays; everything formal, six months' lease of a furnished house in Sioux Falls, with the chap living at a hotel and dropping in for tea every day at five; and felicitations from the late husband when the decree is granted in the morning and the new knot tied in the afternoon—another slipknot like the first, so that the merest twitch at a loose end will——"
"Please don't! And did you never know anything more about them, where they lived or how they ended?"
"Never a thing, Sis. It's all so old, everybody's forgotten it, except Teevan. Of course he'd not forget the only woman who ever really put a lance through his shirt-of-mail vanity."
"You forget Kitty's mother. She remembers."
"That's so, by Jove. Teevan got what was coming to him, he got his 'cone-uppance' as the boys say; but old Kitty—yes, it was rough on her. But she's always put a great face on it. No one would know if they didn't know."
"She's proud. Even though she's been another mother to me she rarely lets me see anything, and she's tried so hard to find comfort in Kitty's boy, in Alden. She's failed in that, though, for some reason."
Her brother glanced sharply at her. "I'll tell you why she's failed, Nell. Alden Teevan wasn't designed to be a comfort to anyone, not even to himself. There was too much Teevan in him at the start, and too much Teevan went into his raising."