He handed Fenwick a card. Fenwick took it to the light. On it was lithographed 'Miss Isabel Morrison,' and a written address, 'Corso de Madrid, Buenos Ayres,' had been lightly scratched out in one corner.
Fenwick put down the card.
'Well,' he said, sharply—'and if I am—what then?'
Welby began to speak—paused—and cleared his throat. He was standing, with one hand lightly resting on the table, his eyes fixed on Fenwick. There was a moment of shock, of mutual defiance.
'This lady seems to have observed the movements of our party here,' said Welby, commanding himself. 'She followed my wife and me to-day, after we met you in the Park. She spoke to us. She gave us the astonishing news that you were a married man—that your wife—'
Fenwick rushed forward and gripped the speaker's arm.
'My God! Tell me!—is she alive?'
His eyes starting out of his head—his crimson face—his anguish, seemed to affect the other with indescribable repulsion.
Welby wrenched himself free.
'That was what Miss Morrison wished to ask you. She says that when you and she last met you were not on very good terms; she shrank, therefore, from addressing you. But she had a respect for your wife—she wished to know what had become of her—and her curiosity impelled her to speak to us. She seems to have been in Buenos Ayres for many years. This year she returned—as governess—with the family of a French engineer, who have taken an apartment in Versailles. She first saw you in the street nearly a month ago.'