In the afternoon of the following day Tyson was sitting with Molly in the dining-room when he was told that Captain Stanistreet had called and had asked to see him.  “Was he—?” Yes, the Captain was in the drawing-room.  Tyson was a little surprised at the announcement; for though the shock of the fire had somewhat obscured his recollection of the events that preceded it, Molly had unfortunately recalled them to his memory.  But he had clean forgotten some of the details.  Consequently he was more than a little surprised when Stanistreet, without any greeting or formality whatsoever, took two letters from his pocket and flung one of them on the window-seat.

“That’s your letter,” he said.  “And here’s the answer.”

He laid Molly’s little note down beside it.

Tyson stared at the letters rather stupidly.  That correspondence was one of the details he had forgotten.  He also stared at Stanistreet, who looked horribly ill.  Then he took up Molly’s note and examined it without reading a word.  It was crumpled, dirty, almost illegible, as if Louis had thrust it violently into his pocket, and carried it about with him for weeks.

“If you really don’t know what it means,” said Stanistreet, “I’ll tell you.  It means that your wife had only one idea in her head.  She didn’t understand it in the least, but she stuck to it.  She thought of it from morning till night, when other women would have been amusing themselves; thought of it ever since you married her and left her.  Unfortunately, it kept her from thinking much of anything else.  There were many things she might have thought of—­she might have thought of me.  But she didn’t.”

“Thanks.  I know that as well as you.  Did it ever occur to you to think of her?”

“I shouldn’t be here if I hadn’t thought of her.”

“Oh—­” Tyson stepped over to the empty fireplace.  It was the only thing in the room that was left intact.

His attitude suggested that he was lord of the hearth, and that his position was indestructible.

“Since you considered your testimony to my wife’s character so indispensable, may I ask why you waited five weeks to give it?”

Tyson could play with words like a man of letters; he fought with them like the City tailor’s son.

“You post your letters rather late.  I left town an hour after I got hers.”

“It was the least you could do.”

“Then I got ill.  That also was the least I could do.  But I did my best to die too, for decency’s sake.  Needless to say, I did not succeed.”

“I see.  You thought of yourself first, and of her afterwards.  What I want to know is, would you have thought of me, supposing—­only supposing—­you could have taken advantage of the situation?”

“No.  In that case I would not have thought of you.  I would have thought of her.”

“In other words, you would have behaved like a scoundrel if you’d got the chance.”  The twinkle in Tyson’s eyes intimated that he was enjoying himself immensely.  He had never had the whip-hand of Stanistreet before.