"Do!" exclaimed the Consul, "I should think he had done enough, in all conscience. Why, confound him, he's gone off with my wife!"
"Don't you call my husband names!" sobbed Mrs. Scarsdale.
"Well, he certainly has enough of his own, that's a fact."
"If you were a man," retorted the disconsolate bride, "you would do something, instead of making stupid jokes about my poor Stanley. I'm a distressed American citizen——"
"No, you're not; you became a British subject when you married Scarsdale," corrected Allingford.
"Well, I won't be, so there! I tell you I'm an American woman in distress, and you are my Consul and you've got to help me."
"I'll help you with the greatest pleasure in the world. I'm quite as anxious to recover my wife as you can be to find your husband."
"Then what do you advise?" she asked.
"We are going somewhere at a rapid rate," he replied. "When we arrive, we will leave the train and return to Basingstoke as soon as possible. Now do you happen to know our next stop?"
"Yes: Salisbury."