“I’m amazed! Faunce said nothing about this when we talked together the other night. I wonder if he’s told any one else!”
The doctor shook his head with a dry laugh.
“Not a bit of it. He kept still and married Diane Herford. I advised him against it, I tried to stop it, but he wouldn’t listen. The result has been just what I expected.”
“You mean——”
“She’s found it all out and left him.”
The hand that held the cigar shook so badly that Overton quietly lowered it out of sight.
“I knew she’d left him,” he said huskily. “Fanny Price just told me.”
“Oh, yes, the judge isn’t making a secret of her home-coming. He consented to hush up the rest—about Faunce, I mean—until he sees you. There’s no need, is there, to make the scandal any worse? How do things stand? Are you going to expose him?”
Overton shook his head.
“I thought we had come to an agreement about that—to save his wife; but I can’t understand why he told her. It changes everything. Meanwhile, I’ve refused the command of the new expedition and urged them to retain Faunce.”