* * * * *
Major Sutton had been a Benedict for nearly ten years. His wife was a pretty, fashionable little woman, some months—though few suspected this—older than himself. She dressed with taste, had a capable maid, and was, in the eyes of Johnny Sutton, perennially young and beautiful. He had no secrets from her, and told her, like a good boy, where he had been, who he had seen, what they had said. The couple were on terms of delightful good fellowship, and she, for her part, shared with Johnny all the dearest secrets of her dearest friends.
“I say, Maudie,” he began, when they were settled in their brougham, “you know my pal, Pat Doran, one of the best fellows who ever stepped——”
“Yes, of course I do; he looks like an unhappy duke, poor old boy.”
“I met him to-day, alone and evidently rather wretched. You see, he feels a bit out of it now he is retired; he is like a lost dog. The regiment was his home; now he is out of it. If he had had a clever little wife to exploit him he might have become a brigadier and goodness knows what. Now he is short of a job; he is not even on the club committee, and he has nothing to do.”
“And Satan finds, etc. etc.; only he is too old to get into mischief, I should hope. What about him?”
“Well, you see, he doesn’t take kindly to London, and he does not care to live in Ireland. He has a fine estate and castle over there. His family goes back to the Flood, and had their own ship.”
“Yes, he looks an aristocrat all over,” agreed Mrs. Sutton, who, being the daughter of a successful nobody, had a profound respect for blue blood.
“He is one of the simplest and best of men, but all alone in the world. After living years in a mess he can’t stand the empty halls of his ancestors, and I’ve been telling him to-day, that he must marry!”
“Of course,” she eagerly agreed—“certainly he must marry.”