"Then there was some local scandal—on the subject of Barnes and Mrs. Fairmile?"
"Possibly. Scandal pour rire! Not a soul believed that there was anything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind of incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs. Fairmile has been an intrigante from her cradle. Barnes was at one time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the marriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, and he shilly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt end to it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of his wife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child."
"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and 'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the 'cruelty'?"
French assented.
"And you suspect that money played a great part in the whole transaction?"
"I don't suspect—the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs. Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doing it."
Penrose smoked and pondered.
"Well, then—what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had not much affection left for his wife?"
"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was a great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but he was very fond of her in his own way—increasingly fond of her—up to that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an action—a writ of habeas corpus, I think—to recover his daughter, as an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long——"
"Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him—after the decree."