"He is warm-hearted, and one of the jolliest fellows you could meet. Curiously enough, from a letter he wrote me just before starting he gave me the impression that he believed his wife to be not only plain, but vulgar in appearance."
"And is she?"
"She is positively lovely. Rather small, perhaps, but exquisitely fair, with large laughing blue eyes, and the most fetching manner. If he had raised her veil, I don't believe he would ever have gone abroad to cultivate the dusky nigger."
"What became of her,—'poor maid forlorn?'"
"She gave up 'milking the cow with the crumpled horn,' and the country generally, and came up to London, where she took a house, went into society, and was the rage all last season."
"Why did you not tell him how pretty she was?" impatiently.
"Because I was in Ireland at the time on leave, and heard nothing of it until I received that letter telling of the marriage and his departure. I was thunderstruck, you may be sure, but it was too late then to interfere. Some one told me the other day he is on his way home."
"'When Greek meets Greek' we know what happens," says Molly. "I think their meeting will be awkward."
"Rather. She is to be at Herst this autumn: she was a ward of your grandfather's."
"Don't fall in love with her, Teddy."