Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/515

Rh “Never mind: tell me.”

“Well—after you all left Lynbrook I had rather a bad break-down—the strain of Mrs. Amherst’s case, I suppose. You remember Bramble, the Clifton grocer? Miss Bramble nursed me—I daresay you remember her too. When I recovered I married her—and after that things didn’t go well.”

He paused, breathing quickly, and looking about the room with odd, furtive glances. “I was only half-well, anyhow—I couldn’t attend to my patients properly—and after a few months we decided to leave Clifton, and I bought a practice in New Jersey. But my wife was ill there, and things went wrong again—damnably. I suppose you’ve guessed that my marriage was a mistake. She had an idea that we should do better in New York—so we came here a few months ago, and we’ve done decidedly worse.”

Justine listened with a sense of discouragement. She saw now that he did not mean to acknowledge his failing, and knowing the secretiveness of the drug-taker she decided that he was deluded enough to think he could still deceive her.

“Well,” he began again, with an attempt at jauntiness, “I’ve found out that in my profession it’s a hard struggle to get on your feet again, after illness or—or any bad set-back. That’s the reason I asked you to say a word for me. It’s not only the money, though I [ 499 ]