"I'd no idea that he was--or had been--a married man.

He certainly never mentioned wife nor children to me, sir, and yet I knew Brake about as intimately as two men can know each other for some years before we came back to England." Bryce fell into one of his fits of musing.

What could be the meaning of this extraordinary silence on Brake's part?
Was there still some hidden secret, some other mystery at which he had not yet guessed?
"Odd!" he remarked at last after a long pause during which Glassdale had watched him curiously.

"But, did he ever speak to you of an old friend of his named Ransford--a doctor ?" "Never!" said Glassdale.

"Never mentioned such a man!" Bryce reflected again, and suddenly determined to be explicit.
"John Brake, the bank manager," he said, "was married at a place called Braden Medworth, in Leicestershire, to a girl named Mary Bewery.