"There is no question for the moment about your husband, though no doubt a subject of peculiar interest to yourself. I was speaking of Mr. Dare."
She rose to her feet, as if unable to sit while he was standing.
"Mr. Dare is my husband," she said, with a little gesture of defiance, tapping sharply on the table with a teaspoon she held in her hand.
Charles smiled blandly, and looked out of the window.
"There is evidently some misapprehension on that point," he observed, "which I am here to remove. Mr. Dare is at present unmarried."
"I am his wife," reiterated the woman, her color rising under her rouge. "I am, and I won't go. He dared not come himself, a poor coward that he is, to turn his wife out-of-doors. He sent you; but it's no manner of use, so you may as well know it first as last. I tell you nothing shall induce me to stir from this house, from my home, and you needn't think you can come it over me with fine talk. I don't care a red cent what you say. I'll have my rights."
"I am here," said Charles, "to see that you get them, Mrs.—Carroll."
There was a pause. He did not look at her. He was occupied in taking a white thread off his coat.
"Carroll's dead," she said, sharply.
"He is. And your regret at his loss was no doubt deepened by the unhappy circumstances in which it took place. He died in jail."