“Ah, then it was something. Then why say it was ‘nothing?’ You should always be truthful, Cora, always absolutely truthful, in even the smallest matters. And what did you ‘happen to think of just then?’” “I can’t remember now. It’s gone. Anyway it was nothing of consequence. May I have that paper again, Henry?” “Certainly,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then, as he handed it to her, he said: “Tell me what you know about Sir Stephen Lethbridge. I know him only by name.” “Well, I have not seen him for a year or two,” she replied carelessly. “Indeed, I think not since our marriage. He came to the wedding, if you remember.” “I don’t remember. But go on.” “He was in the Gunners. He went out to France in 1914, and was home on sick leave when we were married. He used to be rather fond of me, I believe.” Henry’s mouth opened. He stared at his wife in astonishment. “Really, Cora----” he began, but she went on without heeding him. “I heard not so long ago that he had got into rather a bad set. Somebody told me that the things he had seen out in France seemed to have unsettled his brain--I know that happened in other cases too. But he was a man who would never, I am quite sure, have done anything dishonorable. Oh, I wish I knew,” she exclaimed, carried away by a sudden emotion. “I do wish I knew what made him kill himself!” “I wouldn’t worry about him, my dear Cora, if I were you,” her husband remarked coldly. “Probably he was mentally unsound, mad--‘potty’ as the boys say, Those scenes in the trenches must have been extremely trying. And yet--had I been younger and able to join the colors----” He stopped and stared. Cora, lying back on the settee, was laughing hysterically. CHAPTER II. HUSBAND, WIFE--AND ANOTHER. Cora Hartsilver was preparing to go out next morning, when she was told that “Miss Yootha Hagerston would like to see her.” “Oh, ask her to come up!” she exclaimed. “And Jackson----” “Yes, ma’am?” “If Mr. Hartsilver should come in while I am out, he had better be told that I shall not be in for lunch.” “Yes, ma’am.” Jackson, the maid, went downstairs with a look of mild amusement in her eyes. She had been in the Hartsilvers’ service two years, and was fond of expressing her opinion to the other servants on the subject of what she called her master and mistress’s “matrimonial _mésalliance_.” “I give them another year,” she had observed to the cook only the night before, “and that will see the end of it. However a lady like her came to marry that--that old woman of a husband of hers fair beats me.”