“His wife. Come. You must know--you must have known for a long time. I found it out nearly a year ago. The little woman he dined with to-night. I was there too. What on earth made you give the waiter half a quid? Hadn’t you less in your pocket?” He wasn’t mad. She was--the world was. It was a bewitched night, a topsy-turvy universe. She wasn’t afraid of him any longer; he was sane enough, the little wriggling, contemptible reptile. He was sane, he was speaking the absolute truth. She sat down again. “Tell me everything,” she said. “Please tell me everything. I thought that woman was--but--it is I. Will you please explain--everything.” Sutton began to explain. He seemed to enjoy the task. He sat and talked and nursed his knee and glanced ardently, hopefully, from time to time, at the attractive, agonized face in front of him. “It’s a nice little complication,” he said. “Of course when Edred married you he thought that she was dead. He’s not a fool; he wouldn’t have walked into a trap blindfold. He married her some years ago, before you ever met him. They had a baby. It died and she went off her head. They took her away to the asylum. Then, after a bit, he had an official notice that she was dead. He was jolly glad, of course; any fellow would be. Fancy a man being tied up to a cracked wife! Well! To cut a long story short, she wasn’t dead at all. It was somebody else--one of the blessed bungles of the asylum. It was a regular scandal in all the papers. She’s very much alive. She’s out, cured, as sane as you are, except for a rum look in her eyes now and then, which I should funk if I were her husband. He’s taken a little place for her at Mildmay Park. He says he’s a commercial traveler. But she’s cunning; she smells a rat.” “And she’s his wife?” Pamela said stonily. “I can show the register if you like. It was at a church in----” “I don’t want proof. I believe it. I might have known it from the first. She looks his wife. But I----” She put up her hands and gave a short, wounded cry. “The position’s favorable for us,” Sutton said complacently. “Of course, you don’t care for him, a brute who strikes and bullies you. Besides, he’ll throw you over before long. It’s getting a little too hot for him. She suspects and you suspect. He’s afraid you’ll be clawing each other’s faces. You see--it’s an ugly word--he’s committed bigamy. He may be found out any day. That means----” “I know, I know,” she said, sharply nodding her head several times; “but I should never give him away. Never, never.” “We needn’t send him to prison. He wouldn’t be any use to us there,” Sutton said, with a gesture of assent. “But we can bleed him pretty regularly. He’s in a tight corner, poor old chap. I can give him away on the business side and you on the matrimonial.” He laughed with relish. She said, in the most matter-of-fact way, “If you laugh like that again, I think I shall kill you.”