"No: but I dare say Uncle Burton--Mr. Cupples, you know--could tell you. Some time ago he told me that he had met Mr. Marlowe in London, and had some talk with him. I changed the conversation." She paused and smiled with a trace of mischief. "I rather wonder what you supposed had happened to Mr. Marlowe, after you withdrew from the scene of the drama that you had put together so much to your satisfaction." Trent flushed. "Do you really want to know?" he said. "I ask you," she retorted quietly. "You ask me to humiliate myself again, Mrs. Manderson. Very well. I will tell you what I thought I should most likely find when I returned to London this year: that you had married Marlowe and gone to live abroad." She heard him with unmoved composure. "We certainly couldn't have lived very comfortably in England on his money and mine," she observed thoughtfully. "He had practically nothing then." He stared at her--"gaped," she told him some time afterwards. At the moment she laughed with a little embarrassment. "Dear me, Mr. Trent! Have I said anything dreadful? You surely must know ... I thought everybody understood by now ... I'm sure I've had to explain it often enough ... if I marry again I lose everything that my husband left me." The effect of this speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant his face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he gradually drew himself together as he sat into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was: "I had no idea of it." "It is so," she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger. "Really, Mr. Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing.... I think I am glad of it. For one thing, it has secured me--at least since it became generally known--from a good many attentions of a kind that a woman in my position has to put up with as a rule." "No doubt," he said gravely. "And ... the other kind?" She looked at him questioningly. "Ah!" she laughed. "The other kind trouble me even less. I have not yet met a man silly enough to want to marry a widow with a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits and tastes, and nothing but the little my father left me."