Roger frowned. "I have told Lizzie over and over again that I wouldn't have those girls encouraged here. What can possess her to do it?" And, after saying that, he passed into one of those fits of restlessness that used to attack him at Gibraltar Terrace. "Look here, Roger," I said, presently, "couldn't you--pull up a bit? Couldn't you put all this nonsense away?" "Which nonsense?" he retorted. "What would Mr. Brandon say if he knew it? I'll not speak of your mother. It is not nice, you know; it is not, indeed." "Can't you speak out?" he returned, with intense irritation. "Put what away?" "Lizzie." I spoke the name under my breath, not liking to say it, though I had wanted to for some time. All the anger seemed to go out of Roger. He lay still as death. "_Can't_ you, Roger?" "Too late, Johnny," came back the answer in a whisper of pain. "Why?" "She is my wife." I leaped from my chair in a sort of terror. "No, no, Roger, don't say that! It cannot be." "But it _is_," he groaned. "These eighteen months past." I stood dazed; all my senses in a whirl. Roger kept silence, his face turned to the pillow. And the laughter from below came surging up. I had no heart affection that I was aware of, but I had to press my hand to still its thumping as I leaned over Roger. "Really married? Surely married?" "As fast and sure as the registrar could marry us," came the smothered answer. "We did not go to church." "Oh, Roger! _How_ came you to do it?" "Because I was a fool." I sat down again, right back in the chair. Things that had puzzled me before were clearing themselves now. _This_ was the torment that had worried his mind and prolonged, if not induced, the fever, when he first lay ill of the accident; this was the miserable secret that had gone well-nigh to disturb the brain: partly for the incubus the marriage entailed upon him, partly lest it should be found out. It had caused him to invent fables in more ways than one. Not only had he to conceal his proper address from us all when at Gibraltar Terrace, especially from his mother and Mr. Brandon; but he had had to scheme with Scott to keep his wife in ignorance altogether--of his accident and of where he was lying, lest Lizzie should present herself at his bedside. To account for his absence from home, Scott had improvised a story to her of Roger's having been despatched by the hospital authorities to watch a case of illness at a little distance; and Lizzie unsuspiciously supplied Scott with changes of raiment and other things Roger needed from his chest of drawers.