“But wait a bit, my dear fellow,” said I, for he was actually holding out his hand:  “you have still to tell me what the report was.”

“Divorce!” he answered in a tragic voice.  “Clephane, the fellow says she was divorced in India, and that it was—­that it was her fault!”

He turned away his face.  It was in a flame.

“And you are going to thrash Quinby for saying that?”

“If he sticks to it, I most certainly am,” said Bob, the fire settling in his blue eyes.

“I should think twice about it, Bob, if I were you.”

“My dear man, what else do you suppose I have been thinking of all the afternoon?”

“It will make a fresh scandal, you see.”

“I can’t help that.”

And Bob shut his mouth with a self-willed snap.

“But what good will it do?”

“A liar will be punished, that’s all!  It’s no use talking, Clephane; my mind is made up.”

“But are you so sure that it’s a lie?” I was obliged to say it at last, reluctantly enough, yet with a wretched feeling that I might just as well have said it in the beginning.

“Sure?” he echoed, his innocent eyes widening before mine.  “Why, of course I’m sure!  You don’t know what pals we’ve been.  Of course I never asked questions, but she’s told me heaps and heaps of things; it would fit in with some of them, if it were true.”

Then I told him that it was true, and how I knew that it was true, and my reason for having kept all that knowledge to myself until now.  “I could not give her away even to you, Bob, nor yet tell you that I had known her before; for you would have been certain to ask when and how; and it was in her first husband’s time, and under his name.”

It was a comfort to be quite honest for once with one of them, and it is a relief even now to remember that I was absolutely honest with Bob Evers about this.  He said almost at once that he would have done the same himself, and even as he spoke his whole manner changed toward me.  His face had darkened at my unexpected confirmation of the odious rumour, but already it was beginning to lighten toward me, as though he found my attitude the one redeeming feature in the new aspect of affairs.  He even thanked me for my late reserve, obviously from his heart, and in a way that went to mine on more grounds than one.  It was as though a kindness to Mrs. Lascelles was already the greatest possible kindness to him.

“But I am glad you have told me now,” he added, “for it explains many things.  I was inclined to look upon you, Duncan—­you won’t mind my telling you now—­as a bit of a deliberate interloper!  But all the time you knew her first, and that alters everything.  I hope to out you still, but I sha’n’t any longer bear you a grudge if you out me!”

I was horrified.

“My dear fellow,” I cried, “do you mean to say this makes no difference?”

“It does to Quinby.  I must keep my hands off him, I suppose, though to my mind he deserves his licking all the more.”