"Lord Saxonby? You mean that chap who hung round her before I went away?" Owen's voice was studiously self-controlled, but his hand shook as he played with a silver pencil-case on the table before him.
"Yes. That's the man."
"I see." For a moment he bent his head over the table, and when he looked up Barry understood that he had accepted the truth at last. "So she's played me false, has she? Married another fellow without troubling to let me know. Well, there's no more to be said, I suppose. I must make up my mind to be the laughing-stock of my friends, to be pointed at by men and women, jeered at in the clubs, as the fellow who was jilted ... thrown over for another fellow!"
He paused; then resumed in a louder tone.
"It's an ugly word, Barry—jilted. And by Jove, it's an ugly thing. Odd how naturally women take to it, isn't it? They won't steal, as a rule—draw the line at murder, but they think nothing of making damned fools of men who are insane enough to believe in them!"
He laughed bitterly; and his eyes looked grim.
"It would have been quite easy to let me know, wouldn't it?" He flung the question at his friend. "A sixpenny wire—even a cable wouldn't have ruined her, would it? And it would have been much less brutal than to let me come home expecting to find a blushing bride waiting for me!"
"I expect she ... she thought you'd see it in the papers," said Barry rather lamely. "Although it was kept pretty quiet here there were paragraphs about it, of course, and she may have supposed you would see them."
"Hardly the thing to leave it to chance," said Owen drily. "After all, when one gets out of an invitation to dinner, one generally sends an excuse; but ..." he broke off, and his eyes blazed suddenly "... look here, Barry, you know, and I know, that this woman has played a low-down trick on me. I thought her—well, no matter what I thought her—but anyway I know her now for what she is. And I'll be infinitely obliged to you if you'll be good enough to drop the subject now and for evermore."
"I say, old chap, I'm awfully sorry——"