Stay! one other person knew the true name of Mrs. Clover’s husband—­Polly Sparkes.

“Polly be hanged,” muttered Gammon.

“When is the wedding?” Greenacre inquired casually in one of their conversations.

“Wedding?  Whose wedding?”

“Why, yours.”

Gammon’s face darkened.  A change had come about in his emotions.  He was afraid of Polly, he was weary of Polly, he heartily wished he had never seen Polly’s face.  For self-scrutiny Gammon had little inclination and less aptitude; he could not have explained the origin and progress of his nearer relations with Miss Sparkes.  Going straight to the point, like a man of business, he merely knew that he had made a condemnable mistake, and the question was how to put things right.

“There’s one bit of luck,” he remarked, instead of answering the inquiry, “she isn’t on speaking terms with her aunt.”

“I’m rather glad to hear that.  But do you think she’ll hold out against her curiosity?”

“In any case she won’t learn anything from Mrs. Clover.  I’m pretty sure of that.”

“I can only hope you’re right about Mrs. Clover,” said Greenacre musingly.  “If so, she must be a rather uncommon sort of woman, especially—­if you will excuse the remark—­in that class.”

“She is,” replied Gammon with noteworthy emphasis.  “I don’t know a woman like her—­no one like her.  I wouldn’t mind betting all I have that she’ll never speak a word as long as she lives about that man.  She’ll never tell her daughter.  Minnie will suppose that her father turned up somehow just for a few hours and then went off again for good and all.”

“Remarkable woman,” murmured Greenacre.  “It saves trouble, of course.”

Possibly he was reflecting whether it might be to his advantage or not to reveal this little matter in Stanhope Gardens.  Perhaps it seemed to him on the whole that he had done wisely in making known to Miss Trefoyle only the one marriage (which she might publish or not as her conscience dictated), and that his store of private knowledge was the richer by a detail he might or might not some day utilize.  For Mr. Greenacre had a delicacy of his own.  He did not merely aim at sordid profits.  In avowing his weakness for aristocratic companionship he told a truth which explained many singularities in what would otherwise have been a career of commonplace dishonesty.

“I suppose she must be told,” said Gammon with bent head.  “Polly, I mean.”

“Miss Sparkes is a young lady of an inquiring spirit.  She will want to know why she does not benefit by Lord Polperro’s death.”

“You told her yourself about the will, remember.”

“I did.  As things turn out it was a pity.  By the by, I should like to have seen that document.  As Cuthbertson has no knowledge of it, our deceased friend no doubt drafted it himself.  More likely than not it would have been both amusing and profitable to the lawyers, like his father’s in the days of our youth.  I wonder whether he called Mrs. Clover his wife?  We shall never solve all these interesting doubts.”