Had he witnessed that scene on the dummy--this afternoon ?--it seemed a long while ago--had he heard those portentous words of his mother-in-law to his wife ?--had they meant that she had warned her daughter against the bad blood in her veins, extracted a promise--broken!--to walk in the narrow way of the dutiful wife--mercifully spared by a fortunate marriage the terrible temptations of the older woman's youth?
Had Helene confessed ...

in desperate need of help, advice?
...

Doremus was just the bounder to compromise a woman and then blackmail her....

Good God! What _was_ it?
For all his mental turmoil he realized that here alone was the only possible menace to his life's happiness.

His mother-in-law's past was a bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded to limbo these days.
Even an open scandal, if some one of the offal sheets of San Francisco got hold of the story and published it, would be forgotten in time.