"Can I speak with you alone, Mrs. Rutherford?" tremulously asked Plowden, stopping at the threshold.
"Certainly, Mr. Plowden; come in," Edna replied, trying her best to speak pleasantly. Plowden glanced at Miss Fithian. "Oh, I am as good as alone," continued Edna, following his look. "Helen is asleep; and even if she were awake, she could not hear you if you spoke in an undertone."
"True," assented Plowden. "I forgot that she's as deaf as a post. Well, the trouble is just this. Your husband has confided to me that a little difference has arisen between you, owing to a slight misunderstanding—"
"Ah, indeed! 'A slight misunderstanding,' eh? Well?" interpolated Mrs. Rutherford, icily, but with fire in her eye.
Plowden was very nervous, but he struggled on bravely: "As I alone can set the matter right, he appealed to me to do so."
"Ah! You think you can. I am curious to know how. I presume I shall understand as you go on."
He shuddered, but continued: "In order that you may do so, I must reveal to you my secret—one that I have locked up for many years. When I came to this country, I left a wife in England."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Edna, drawing away from him in surprise, and saying to herself, "Ah! is he too a villain?"
Involuntarily he raised his voice a little, to span the distance that now separated them, and went on: "Yes; but I had some excuse, I assure you." He then related the story of his married life as he had told it to Rutherford, carefully omitting, however, to mention the age of his daughter.
When he had finished, Edna remarked: "Well, I am surprised, Mr. Plowden. But still I do not see what all this has to do with me and my husband."