Studies in Wives

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

"Absolutely no one! Yes, wait a moment—there has been one exception. Louise told Gerda Hinton. You know they became very intimate after we went to Bedford Park, and Louise thought Gerda ought to know. But it made no difference—no difference at all!" he added, emphatically; "for in fact poor Gerda practically left her baby to Louise's care."

"And that worthless creature, Jack Hinton—does he know too?"

"No, I don't think so; in fact I may say most decidedly not—but of course Gerda may have told him, though for my part I don't believe that husbands and wives share their friends' secrets. Still, you are quite at liberty to tell Kate."

"No," said Wingfield, "I don't intend to tell Kate, and there will be no reason for doing so if you will take my advice—which is, I need hardly tell you, to go and get married at once. Now that you have come into this money, your marrying becomes a positive duty. Are you aware that if you were run over and killed on your way home to-day Louise would have no standing? that she would not have a right to a penny of this money, or even to any of the furniture which is in your house? Let me see, how long is it that you have been"—he hesitated awkwardly—"together?"

Dering looked round at him rather fiercely. "We have been married nine years and a half," he said. "Our wedding day was the first of September. We spent our honeymoon in Denmark. You remember my little legacy?"

Wingfield nodded his head. His heart suddenly went out to his friend—the prosperous lawyer had reason to remember that hundred pounds legacy, for ten pounds of it had gone to help him out of some foolish scrape. But Dering had forgotten all that; he went on speaking, but more slowly:

"And then, as you know, we came back and settled down in Gray's Inn, and though we were horribly poor, perhaps poorer than even you ever guessed, we were divinely happy." He turned his back to the room and stared out once more at the greyness opposite.

"But you're quite right, old man, it's time we did like our betters! We'll be married at once, and I'll take her off for another and a longer honeymoon, and we'll come back and be even happier than we were before."

Then again, as abruptly as before, he was gone, shutting the door behind him, and leaving Wingfield staring thoughtfully after him.

That his friend, that the Philip Dering of ten years ago, should have done such a thing, was in no way remarkable, but that Louise—the thoughtful, well-balanced, intelligent woman, who, coming as a mere girl from Denmark, had known how to work her way up to a position of great trust and responsibility in a City house, so winning the esteem and confidence of her employers that they had again and again asked her to return to them after her marriage—that she should have consented to such—to such.... Wingfield even in his own mind hesitated for the right word ... to such an arrangement—seemed to the lawyer an astounding thing, savouring indeed of the fifth dimension.