“Yes.  What of it?”

“He crossed to Southampton with Marjorie and her mother.  He didn’t know she was going over to be married, and she didn’t tell him.  She wrote to me about it, though.  I was in school at Farmington; she left school to marry—­a mere child of eighteen, undeveloped for her age, thin, almost scrawny, with pipe-stem arms and neck, red hair, a very sweet, full-lipped mouth, and gray eyes that were too big for her face.”

“Well,” said Gatewood with a short laugh, “what about it?  You don’t think Kerns fell in love with an insect of that genus, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” smiled Mrs. Gatewood.

“Nonsense.  Besides, what of it?  She’s married, you say.”

“Her husband died of enteric at Ladysmith.  She wrote me.  She has never remarried.  Think of it, John—­in all these years she has never remarried!”

“Oh!” said Gatewood pityingly; “do you really suppose that Tommy Kerns has been nursing a blighted affection all these years without ever giving me an inkling?  Besides, men don’t do that; men don’t curl up and blight.  Besides, men don’t take any stock in big-eyed, flat-chested, red-headed pipe stems.  Why do you think that Kerns ever cared for her?”

“I know he did.”

“How do you know it?”

“From Marjorie’s letters.”

“The conceited kid!  Well, of all insufferable nerve!  A man like Kerns—­a man—­one of the finest, noblest characters—­spiritually, intellectually, physically—­a practically faultless specimen of manhood!  And a red-headed, spindle-legged—­Oh, my!  Oh, fizz!  Dearest, men don’t worship a cage of bones with an eighteen-year-old soul in it—­like a nervous canary pecking out at the world!”

“She created a furor in England,” observed his wife, smiling.

“Oh, I dare say she might over there.  Besides, she’s doubtless fattened up since then.  But if you suppose for one moment that Tommy could even remember a girl like that—­”

Mrs. Gatewood smiled again—­the wise, sweet smile of a young matron in whom her husband’s closest friend had confided.  And after a moment or two the wise smile became more thoughtful and less assured; for that very day the Tracer of Lost Persons had called on her to inquire about a Mrs. Stanley—­a new client of his who had recently bought a town house in East Eighty-third Street and a country house on Long Island; and who had applied to him to find her fugitive butler and a pint or two of family jewels.  And, after her talk with the Tracer of Lost Persons, Mrs. Gatewood knew that her favorite among all her husband’s friends, Mr. Kerns, would never of his own volition go near that same Marjorie Manners who had flirted with him to the very perilous verge before she told him why she was going to England—­and who, now a widow, had returned with her five-year-old daughter to dwell once more in the city of her ancestors.

Kerns had said very simply:  “She has spoiled women for me—­all except you, Mrs. Gatewood.  And if Jack hadn’t married you—­”