He took a turn or two in silence. Roden sat with crossed legs, nursing an elbow with one hand, his chin supported in the hollowed palm of the other.
"Madeline and Kate Ormsby had been schoolfellows, and the former had no secrets from her friend. The day following our interview I was called away to London by the illness of my aunt, Mrs. Gascoigne. At Denham Lodge there is a terrace with a stone balustrade, from which a flight of steps leads to the lower garden. As Madeline and Kate were leaning over this balustrade after dark a few evenings later, listening to a nightingale, two people came along the lower walk, a man and a woman, judging from their voices. Said the man, as they drew near:
"'The way Mr. Drelincourt has behaved to the girl is common talk in the village. Of course he can't marry her--she's too far beneath him for that--and now they say she's fit to break her heart because he refuses to have anything more to do with her.'
"'Perhaps he's grown tired of her and found somebody more to his liking. That's often the way you men have of treating us,' answered the woman.
"Oh, come! We're not all as bad as that,' said the man with a laugh, after which they passed out of earshot.
"An hour later Madeline wrote me that all was at an end between us. The letter, which should have reached me next morning, was kept back by Kate, and did not come to hand till three days later. Within four hours of receiving it I was at Denham Lodge, only to find that Madeline and her uncle had left there the day before.
"My aunt lingered on from week to week. I was her last living relative, and she would not hear of my leaving for longer than a few hours at a time. All I could do was to write a note to Madeline, begging for an explanation, and inclose it under cover to the colonel at his club. A week later my note was returned to me from Paris, together with a few lines from the colonel, stating that thenceforward all communication with me must cease, both on his part and that of his niece. What I had been guilty of which deserved such a sentence I was wholly at a loss to conceive. I could not comprehend the meaning of such an action.
"A month later my aunt died. As soon as I was at liberty, I set out for the continent, but nowhere could I come across a trace of those I was in search of. You know what followed a little later: how I was accidentally wounded while out shooting; how I was carried to Denham Lodge, and there nursed back to convalescence by Kate Ormsby."
"Some part of what you have now told me I know or guessed already," said Roden; "but not the whole of it."
"You did not know how, one day, Kate read to me a passage from a letter professedly written by her correspondent, Lady Linthorpe, in which it was stated that Madeline Fenwicke had been married a fortnight before at Rome. Within six weeks of that day Kate Ormsby had become my wife."