The Anglo-Saxon race being what it is, a good deal of courage is needed to go on with the relation of what occurred next. However, there is no help for it; history is history, and we can only tell it as it actually occurred, regardless of whether the undemonstrative are outraged or not. After Harry had thrown himself at his feet James took his brother's head gently between his hands, and then, with the greatest simplicity and naturalness in the world, bent forward and kissed it.
"Poor old thing," he said softly; "you have been having sort of a hard time of it, haven't you?"
"I wish you would tell me, James," said Harry somewhat later, as they sat gazing into the fire, James in the armchair and Harry on the floor, leaning back against James' legs, "I wish you would tell me just how you found out about her being married, and all about it. It seems so incredible--both that she should have been married and that you, of all people, should have been on the spot to discover it."
"Well, I just saw her, coming out of the marriage office with a man; that was all there was to it. I thought she probably wouldn't have been there unless she had just been married to him, so I had the register looked up, and there she was. She was under the name of Rosa Montagu--that gave us some trouble at first, because of course I didn't know that was her stage name. I put a fellow called Laffan, a young lawyer, onto the business, and he messed about with the register and the detective bureau and communicated with Raynham till he wormed it all out. Finally he got hold of a photograph of Rosa Montagu and showed it to me, and after that it was easy enough--Of course, it was a most God-given chance that I stumbled on her just at that compromising moment. She really wasn't as foolish as she sounds; she hadn't lived in Minneapolis for years and knew almost nobody there except her young man. It was a long chance, what with using her stage name and all, that any one would ever find her out."
"Yes. But I don't quite see--You say she was married in September?"
"Well, if you knew she was married then, I don't quite see why you didn't make use of your knowledge before. When I was playing round with her, I mean--of course I, like the brazen idiot I was, didn't write you, but you must have heard--"