"Your husband is not the Mr. Cray who was connected with the Great Chwddyn Mine!" he exclaimed. "Marcus Cray?"
She was startled to tremor. There was no cause for it, of course the fact of its being known that she was Mark's wife could not result in their taking him. But these unpleasant recognitions do bring a fear with them, startling as it is vague.
"Don't be alarmed," said the surgeon kindly, discerning the exact state of the case. "I do not wish ill to your husband. I was no shareholder in the company. Not but that I felt an inclination for a dip into it, and might have had it, had the thing gone on."
"It was not Mr. Cray's fault," she gasped. "He would have kept the water out had it been in his power: its coming in ruined him. I cannot see--I have never been able to see--why everybody should be so much against him."
"I cannot understand why he need keep away," was the answering remark.
He looked at her inquiringly as he spoke. She shook her head in a helpless sort of manner: she had never clearly understood it either.
"Ah well; I see you don't know much; you young wives rarely do. Did you know Dr. Davenal?"
"He was my uncle," she said. "He brought me up. I was Miss Caroline Davenal."
Another moment of surprise for Mr. Welch. It seemed so impossible for a niece of the good and flourishing physician-surgeon to be so reduced, as he suspected she was--almost homeless, friendless, penniless.
She was struggling with her tears again. With the acknowledgment her memory had gone back to the old home, the old days. She had scarcely believed then there was such a thing as care in the world; now----?