In the meanwhile Ralph Webster had called a cab, and was being driven to Pembridge Terrace in--for him--a strange state of excitement. The story he had just heard--the story of a wife forsaken by a John Temple--had filled his mind with a sudden suspicion. Could this be the John Temple who had married the fair girl in secret, now living under his aunt's roof? Was this the cause of his secrecy? This other wife, of whom he had tired, had left to fight her own way in the world. It seemed feasible, and if it were so, how was he himself to act? Could he throw a bombshell in this poor child's path, and in a moment destroy all her happiness and hopes? But on the other hand--and Webster frowned and bit his lips. "He must be a cursed scoundrel if he has wronged her so cruelly," he muttered, and he determined during the evening to obtain from his aunts a complete personal description of the John Temple who had married May Churchill. "No doubt Miss Weir has some portrait of her lost husband," he thought a little scornfully; "but at all events he did not break her heart. Her description of a dead love was not bad. However, she is a woman I could not love." The woman he could love was in Miss Webster's drawing-room alone when he entered it, and as he did so May held out her hand with a smile. "You have come to tell us all about your visit to the pretty actress?" she said. "Yes," he answered a little grimly. "And is she very pretty? Does she look as well off the stage as on?" "She looks very well off, at all events, and I have never seen her on, but I am going to see her to-morrow." May laughed her sweet girlish laugh. "And is she nice?" she said. "How does she talk?" "I don't think you could call her nice. She talks in a hard, worldly fashion, but she is clever. She puts things in a quaint, original way that somehow has a certain charm in it. No, nice is not the word for Miss Kathleen Weir." "And what did she talk about?" "She discoursed on the folly of loving anyone if they had ceased to love you." The rose-bloom deepened on May's cheek. "But," she hesitated, "if--if you had really loved anyone I do not think you could cease to love them because they had tired of you." "And you really think," went on Ralph Webster with a ring of pain in his voice, and with his dark, searching eyes fixed on May's fair face, "that if you had cared for anyone and found out they were unworthy, that you would not change?" "I think love can not change," answered May in a low tone, and Ralph Webster suppressed a sigh as she spoke. "Perhaps not," he said, slowly, but at this moment Aunt Eliza entered the room, and hurried up to him with her kind welcoming hand. "My dear Ralph," she said, "I did not know you were here, or I should have been down before." "I have been hearing all about Miss Kathleen Weir, the actress, Miss Eliza," said May, smiling.