“I was thinking of the sister,” said Rattenden.  “She has Mrs. Middlemist’s temperament without her force of character—­the sex without the splendor.  I heard a very curious thing about her only yesterday.”

“What was it?”

“It was one of those things that are not told.”

“Tell me,” said Sypher, earnestly.  “I have reasons for asking.  I am convinced there are circumstances of which neither Mrs. Dix’s mother nor sister know anything.  I’m a loyal man.  You may trust me.”

“Very well,” said Rattenden.  “Have you ever heard of a man called Mordaunt Prince?  Yes—­a well-known actor—­about the biggest blackguard that disgraces the stage.  He was leading man at the theater where she last played.  They were doing ‘The Widow of Ware.’  They were about a great deal together.  It was common gossip at the time.”

“Gossip is notoriously uncharitable,” said Sypher.

“If charity covers a multitude of sins, uncharitableness has the advantage of uncovering them.  The pudor britannicus, however, is responsible for uncovering the one I am going to tell you of.  About two or three months before the marriage, Emmy Oldrieve and Mordaunt Prince were staying together at an hotel in Tunbridge Wells.  There was no mistake about it.  There they were.  They had a motor with them.  A week before the Dix marriage was announced Mordaunt Prince married a Mrs. Morris—­old Sol Morris, the money-lender’s widow.”

Sypher stared at him.

“It’s one of the least amazing of human phenomena,” said Rattenden, cynically.  “I’m only puzzled at Calypso being so soon able to console herself for the departure of Ulysses, and taking up with such a dreamy-headed shadow of a man as our friend Dix.  The end of the Mordaunt Prince story is that he soon grew too much for the widow, who has pensioned him off, and now he is drinking himself to death in Naples.”

“Emmy Oldrieve!  Good God, is it possible?” cried Sypher, absently pushing aside the dish the waiter handed him.

Rattenden carefully helped himself to partridge and orange salad.

“It’s not only possible, but unquestionable fact.  You see,” he added complacently, “nothing can happen without its coming sooner or later to me.  My informant was staying at the hotel all the time.  You will allow me to vouch absolutely for her veracity.”

Sypher did not speak for some moments.  The large dining-room with its portraits of self-conscious statesmen faded away and became a little street in Paris, one side in shade and the other baking in the sun; and at a little iron table sat a brown and indiscreet Zouave and Septimus Dix, pale, indecisive, with a wistful appeal in his washed-out blue eyes.  Suddenly he regained consciousness, and, more for the sake of covering his loss of self-possession than for that of eating, he recalled the waiter and put some partridge on his plate.  Then he looked across the table at his guest and said very sternly: