CHAPTER X.
THE SECRET OF DALTON'S LIFE.
'I cannot understand the terms on which you say you and Mrs. Trelawney have parted,' said Goring, to whom his most valued friend Dalton had been, as a sort of relief to his own mind, apparently making what he called 'a clean breast of it,' and detailing his relations with the fair widow of Chilcote Grange. 'You seem to have made love enough to her—that I saw for myself often. You seemed to have expressed admiration enough for her, to all of which she appears to have listened with patience and pleasure in some instances; with impatience and petulance in others; and yet you seem to have wound up with a kind of quarrel at last!'
'She acknowledged that she had only been amusing herself and befooling me.'
'It would also seem by your own account that amid all the curious love-making you never made her a direct proposal of marriage.'
'No.'
'Why?'
'I dared not,' said Dalton, sadly.
'You dared not—and why?'
'Because—because I am a married man—there now, the murder is out!'
'A married man—you, Tony Dalton!' exclaimed Goring, in utter bewilderment.