“By the way, Joe, Larry told me something about you I'd never heard before—that you had been married, and had a child.”
“Yes. You didn't hear because I wasn't telling anybody about it when it happened, and it never came out.”
“Mind telling me about it, Joe?”
He pulled at his perfecto while assembling his facts; and then he made one of the longest speeches Joe Ellison—“Silent Joe” some of his friends had called him in the old days—was ever known to utter. But there was reason for its length; it was an epitome of the most important period of his life.
“I had a nice little country place over in Jersey for three or four years. It all happened there. No one knew me for what I was; they took me for what I pretended to be, a small capitalist whose interests required his taking occasional trips. Nice neighbors. That's where I met my wife. She was fine every way. That's why I kept all that part of my life from my pals; I was afraid they might leak and the truth would spoil everything. My wife was an orphan, niece of the widow of a broker who lived out there. She never knew the truth about me. She died when the baby was born. When the baby was a year and a half my big smash came, and I went up the river. But I was never connected up with the man who lived over in Jersey and who suddenly cancelled his lease and moved away.”
The Duchess drew nearer to the heart of her thoughts.
“Was the baby a boy or girl, Joe?”
“Girl.”
The Duchess did not so much as blink. “How old would she be by this time?”
“Eighteen.”