"Just a moment, Noel," said Madame Claire. "May I have a word in your private ear? You won't mind, will you, Connie?"
They went a few paces down the hall, away from the sitting room door.
"Connie wrote me about it last night," said Madame Claire. "I received her note this morning. I had an idea you would be here, and I meant to kill two birds with one stone if possible. I suppose she's serious about this . . . this marriage?"
"Oh, she means to marry him right enough," said Noel, "and I don't see any way of preventing it. Short of fighting a duel. Hang it all!"
"I wonder," interrupted Madame Claire speaking very slowly and thoughtfully, "I wonder whatever became of that little German wife of his?"
"The one he had when he ran off with Connie? Dead, I suppose. Or divorced."
"I think neither," she replied.
"What do you mean?"
"I had some correspondence with her at the time," said Madame Claire, tracing a pattern on the carpet with her stick. "It was after Leonard Humphries was killed in South Africa. I wrote to her—by an odd coincidence I found out where
