“His wife? Oh, of course not. The secret has been most admirably kept; but her property was put in trust, so she’s quite safe with him.” Her property! Kate wondered if her faith in her husband had also been put in trust, if her sensibilities had been protected from his possible inroads. “Do you think it quite fair to have deceived her in that way?” Mr. Orme gave her a puzzled glance: he had no taste for the by-paths of ethical conjecture. “His people wanted to give the poor fellow another chance; they did the best they could for him.” “And--he has done nothing dishonourable since?” “Not that I know of: the last I heard was that they had a little boy, and that he was quite happy. At that distance he’s not likely to bother _us_, at all events.” Long after Mr. Orme had left the topic, Kate remained lost in its contemplation. She had begun to perceive that the fair surface of life was honeycombed by a vast system of moral sewage. Every respectable household had its special arrangements for the private disposal of family scandals; it was only among the reckless and improvident that such hygienic precautions were neglected. Who was she to pass judgment on the merits of such a system? The social health must be preserved: the means devised were the result of long experience and the collective instinct of self-preservation. She had meant to tell her father that evening that her marriage had been put off; but she now abstained from doing so, not from any doubt of Mr. Orme’s acquiescence--he could always be made to feel the force of conventional scruples--but because the whole question sank into insignificance beside the larger issue which his words had raised.