Chapter xii.
Day had broken (though Martin was still solvent) and was casting brilliant Holborn Bars of light through the windows of Tredethlyn Abbey on to the artistic Phiz of Lady Aurorabella.
She was very very weary—tired of her own life, and of several other people’s lives, also she had not the heart to eat, and probably would not have eaten it if she had. Beyond trifling with the wing of a rabbit, cutting a morsel from a cold surloin of grouse, and drinking a single glass of Chiaroscuro, her breakfast was untouched.
For she had just received intelligence that, in spite of all her exertions, her Five Husbands were again at liberty!
“Oh! why did they not all perish?” she sobbed. “I have tried to get rid of them over and over again by every species of assassination, but now I am tired of mild measures. I must do something Desperate!”
So she summoned that ubiquitous detective officer, Inspector Weasel, who, from any quarter of the globe, would come by telegraph to obey her slightest word.
“Weasel” she said “I can endure this no longer, I have made a resolve. By the tyrannical laws of this hateful country, my quintette of husbands have been allowed to keep the marriage certificates. Once in possession of them, I could defy the world. If you value my peace or your own, you must get them for me.”
“I will,” replied the all accomplished detective and he set about it at once.
First, to pursue the fugitive Dr. Marchmont, “Ah” murmured the Detective “my experience tells me that when a fellow on the bolt says he is going to one place, he is certain to set off in exactly the opposite direction. Let me see,” And he carefully examined his Government survey of the World.
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