"Then you are a clever woman. Now, what do you know?" "You bought her a bracelet." "I? I've never bought a bracelet for anyone but you in my life." "Well, Templeton told me so." At this Alfred Whittaker burst out laughing. "I did buy a bracelet, you are quite right, but it was for Mrs. Chamberlain." "You gave a bracelet to Mrs. Chamberlain?" said Regina. "No, no, no, I didn't do anything of the kind. I bought the bracelet for Chamberlain to give his wife. Chamberlain had been in an extremely ugly corner for some time past. I didn't tell you anything about it, because I thought it more than likely that Mrs. Chamberlain might come round pumping you. If you didn't know anything, I felt you wouldn't be able to tell her anything." "Surely you might have trusted me?" "It isn't that I couldn't trust you, for I can and always have done. As it happened, Mrs. Chamberlain was, as you know, by way of being an heiress, and Chamberlain was ridiculously in love." "Can a man be ridiculously in love?" put in Regina. "Yes, very much so. When I married you I told you everything that had happened to me, good, bad and indifferent--Chamberlain didn't, and Mrs. Chamberlain is possessed of a demon of jealousy. She got fixed in her silly little head that Chamberlain had been a sort of King Arthur until she met him. A moment's reflection would have told the silly little fool that the less she inquired into her husband's past the better, and Chamberlain was so much in love with her, and in such a hurry to catch the little heiress, that he did not completely sever ties that he had contracted previously, and trusted to luck to go on shelling out to this Frenchwoman who had had an affair with him lasting some years before his marriage. The French lady did not like being put on short commons, still less did she like being pensioned off, and she began to make herself unpleasant. Poor old Chamberlain got himself into an awful muddle, and confided everything to me. I thought him a fool, and I told him so very plainly; but he's my partner, and I couldn't refuse to help him out. The day that I went to Templeton's and bought that bracelet, Chamberlain went in quite a different direction to have an interview with Madame Raumonier and try to bring her to reason. At that time Mrs. Chamberlain used to make stringent inquiries as to how he had spent every moment of his time. As a matter of fact she had come to the office for him that very day, and was told that he had already gone. When he got home she was told some necessary and harmless lies to the effect that he had been to Templeton's to buy her a bracelet. Heaven only knows what would have happened if she had found out that Chamberlain had never been near Templeton's." "But why were you dragged into it?" "Oh, I was trying to get a settlement." "Why did you bring her to Paris?"