"Mrs. Conry—"
"But she's a married woman, isn't she, Vick?"
"She has a dirty brute of a husband—she's left him forever!"
The Colonel's blue eyes opened in speechless surprise, as his son went on to tell rapidly what had happened the previous night. Before he had finished the old man interrupted by a low exclamation:—
"But she is a married woman, Vickers!"
"Her marriage was a mistake, and she's paid for it, poor woman,—paid with soul and body! She will not pay any longer."
"But what are you going to do, my boy?"
"I love her, father. I mean to take her away, at once, take her and her child."
"Run away with a married woman?" The Colonel's pale face flushed slightly, less in anger than in shame, and his eyes fell from his son's face.
"I wish with all my heart it wasn't so, of course; that she wasn't married, or that she had left him long ago. But that can't be helped. And I don't see how a divorce could make any difference, and it would take a long time, and cause a dirty mess. He's the kind who would fight it for spite, or blackmail. Perhaps later it will come. Now she must not suffer any more. I love her all the deeper for what she has been through. I want to make her life happy, make it up to her somehow, if I can."