Chris stared at him in blank amazement.
"What on earth do you mean? Of course it's the truth. Ask Miss Chester if you don't believe me—she's known about it all along. It was she who first suggested keeping it from Marie . . . Here, I 270 say, what's the matter?"
"Nothing . . . I wish I'd known before, that's all." He laughed grimly. "Aston Knight told me a very different yarn," he broke out with violence after a moment. "He said that the money had been left to your wife, which was why you had married her—and I believed him! My God, what a fool!"
Chris was watching him with angry mystification.
"I don't know what you're driving at," he said shortly. "But I'm much obliged to you for the compliment, I'm sure. Marie hadn't a farthing when I married her—but I settled half of everything on her on our wedding day."
Feathers turned his white face.
"Why didn't you tell her the truth?" he asked with difficulty. "No good ever comes of lying and subterfuge and deceit . . ." He laughed grimly at his own words! He was a fine one to get up in the pulpit and preach when in another twenty-four hours he would have broken every code of honor and friendship.
It was trembling on his lips to tell Chris the whole truth, to keep back nothing from that first moment in the hotel lounge, when his too-ready tongue had started all the mischief.
But for him and his blundering, Chris and his wife would have been happy enough now. He seemed to see it all as plainly as if it were a picture unraveled before his eyes.
Marie had turned against Chris from the moment when she had overheard what he had said to Atkins. All her pride had been up in arms and had gone on increasing from that day until to-night, when in her desperation and unhappiness she had come to him.