“Thanks. Oh, by-the-way, ha, ha, ha! What’s become of that woman, you rogue?”
“What woman?”
“Real womanhood. The woman you were living with in Paris. Ha, ha, ha! You didn’t think I knew that. But I met Cornpepper there on my return from Egypt, and he told me he’d seen you going about with her. How we laughed over our Methodist parson, who wanted art to be moral! What’s the matter?”
The painter’s face had grown white and agitated.
“I’m sorry if I’ve said anything to annoy you,” Herbert protested. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to have given Cornpepper away. But the affair is so ancient. I didn’t know you’d mind a reference to it now.”
“The woman I was living with in Paris,” said Matthew Strang, hoarsely, “was my wife.”
“Non—sense,” said Herbert, in low, long-drawn incredulity. But his cousin’s face was only too convincing.
“She’s not alive now?” he asked.
The painter nodded his head hopelessly.
Herbert sprang to his feet.