How curiously events occur in our lives. Many of the ordinary circumstances of everyday existence which we pass by unnoticed seem to be governed by some laws of which we have absolutely no knowledge whatever. Reader, in your own life, there has occurred some strange combinations of circumstances quite unaccountable, yet by them the whole course of your existence has been altered. You may have noticed them, or you may not. You may call it Fate, or you may be a follower of that shadowy religion called Luck, yet it remains the same—the unexpected always happens.
Who indeed would have expected that my wife herself would have introduced me to the man who had so cleverly baited the trap into which I had fallen? And yet it is always so. There is a mysterious all-ruling spirit of perversity ever at work in that complicated series of events which go to make up what we term life.
“You were telling me that you know my husband,” she said quickly, as we crossed the grass together. “Our conversation was interrupted by that man’s arrival.”
Such reference to the new-comer showed me that she was not well-disposed towards him.
“Do you know,” I said, “I believe that we’ve met somewhere before. I know his face.”
“Possibly. But why Sir Henry should have invited him here again, I can’t imagine.”
“Was his company so disagreeable?” I asked.
“Disagreeable?” she echoed. “He is detestable.”
“Why?”
“Oh, for many reasons,” she responded ambiguously; “I have never liked him.”