She sat without stirring.

Durrance was embarrassed.

He remembered Mr.Adair as a good-humoured man, whose one chief quality was his evident affection for his wife, but with what eyes the wife had looked upon him he had never up till now considered.

Mr.Adair indeed had been at the best a shadowy figure in that small household, and Durrance found it difficult even to draw upon his recollections for any full expression of regret.

He gave up the attempt and asked:-- "Are Harry Feversham and his wife in town ?" Mrs.Adair was slow to reply.
"Not yet," she said, after a pause, but immediately she corrected herself, and said a little hurriedly, "I mean--the marriage never took place." Durrance was not a man easily startled, and even when he was, his surprise was not expressed in exclamations.
"I don't think that I understand.