She didn't want to know; she asked mechanically, her ear attentive only to the sounds from the open windows of the room upstairs. 'Don't you read newspapers here?' was his answer. 'I don't think we do,' she said, listening. 'We've been settling in. I don't think we've remembered to order any newspapers yet.' A look of some, at any rate, relief from the pressure he was evidently struggling under came into Wemyss's face. 'Then I can tell you the real version,' he said, 'without you're being already filled up with the monstrous suggestions that were made at the inquest. As though I hadn't suffered enough as it was! As though it hadn't been terrible enough already----' 'The inquest?' repeated Lucy. Again she turned her head and looked at him. 'Has your trouble anything to do with death?' 'Why, you don't suppose anything else would reduce me to the state I'm in?' 'Oh, I'm sorry,' she said; and into her eyes and into her voice came a different expression, something living, something gentle. 'I hope it wasn't anybody you--loved?' 'It was my wife,' said Wemyss. He got up quickly, so near was he to crying at the thought of it, at the thought of all he had endured, and turned his back on her and began stripping the leaves off the branches above his head. Lucy watched him, leaning forward a little on both hands. 'Tell me about it,' she said presently, very gently. He came back and dropped down heavily beside her again, and with many interjections of astonishment that such a ghastly calamity could have happened to him, to him who till now had never---- 'Yes,' said Lucy, comprehendingly and gravely, 'yes--I know----' --had never had anything to do with--well, with calamities, he told her the story. They had gone down, he and his wife, as they did every 25th of July, for the summer to their house on the river, and he had been looking forward to a glorious time of peaceful doing nothing after months of London, just lying about in a punt and reading and smoking and resting--London was an awful place for tiring one out--and they hadn't been there twenty-four hours before his wife--before his wife---- The remembrance of it was too grievous to him. He couldn't go on. 'Was she--very ill?' asked Lucy gently, to give him time to recover. 'I think that would almost be better. One would be a little at least one would be a little prepared----' 'She wasn't ill at all,' cried Wemyss. 'She just--died.' 'Oh like father!' exclaimed Lucy, roused now altogether. It was she now who laid her hand on his. Wemyss seized it between both his, and went on quickly.