“His wife? He hasn’t got a wife!”
“Oh, hasn’t he? Not now, perhaps. But he had! A little of him went a long way. She ran away from him on her honeymoon. What do you think of that? What kind of a man can he have been to make a woman leave him in a month?”
Something happened inside my head. There was a shock, a whirl, a blinding darkness, followed by a flash of light. Mr Travers had said “America,” and the word had a terrible significance. I sat stunned into silence, and Mr Travers obviously gloated over my discomfiture.
“Pretty condemning, eh? She was an heiress—pots of money. Fine-looking girl, too. I saw her once. Too pale and washed out for my taste, but with an air. Forget her name—something high-flown and romantic, like herself. Well, she left him, and that was the end of it. Never heard a word of her since.”
Romantic name—an heiress—fine-looking—pale. One by one the clues accumulated—step by step the evidence mounted up. I said faintly:—
“Has he tried?”
“Tried to find her? Searched the world! Almost went off his head, I believe. He’d made a mess of it, of course, but he was crazy about her—broken his heart ever since. You can see it in his face. My wife has no patience with her. She’d married for better or worse. Whatever happened, she was a poor thing to throw up the sponge in a month. What’s the matter? You look faint.”
“I—I am! I must go. Some other day,” I gasped vaguely. I went out into the passage, and sat down on an oak chest. The world seemed rocking around me. I was so stunned that I could not feel!