“What! kids as well?”
“Only two.”
Herbert looked glum. “I suppose she’s an impossible person,” he said.
“Do you mean to live with?”
“No, to be seen with.”
“We’ve never been out together in London,” replied the painter, simply. “We drifted apart before I was asked out. Oh, but it’s no use going into it—it’s all too sordid.”
“Poor chap!” said Herbert. “Well, you may rely on my respecting your confidence. I suppose it is a secret?”
“It seems to be. I make none of it, except negatively. You will find Mrs. Strang in the directory as a householder in Camden Town; she took the house, as it happened. She has a little money of her own.”
Herbert smiled sadly. “That’s what I always say. The safest secret in the world is the open secret. If you had hidden her away in Patagonia, or tried to put her into a lunatic asylum, it would have been the talk of the town. As you simply let her live quietly in the heart of London, nobody’s provoked into inquisitiveness, and if anybody knows—as no doubt an odd person does here and there—he doesn’t tell anybody else because he doesn’t know it’s a secret. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear the marriage was duly advertised in the first column of the Times.”
Mr. Matthew Strang’s smile faintly reflected his cousin’s. “No, we were married in Nova Scotia,” he replied. “But what are you doing to-night?”