let, while Mrs.
Muller bent her face over her plate. Then Muller looked at me and said
quietly:

"'That was Captain Decker. I believe that he has the honour of the
friendship of Frau Brandt.'

"There was something so stern in his tones that I could not understand;
but another look at my wife's face filled me with the blackest
misgivings. She had turned a deathly pale, and, faltering something
inaudible, rose from the table and went to her room. Then I asked Muller
what it meant.

"'Ask your wife,' he said sadly; 'you are my dear friend, and she is my
guest--but her conduct has not been satisfactory.'

"I now insisted upon him telling me more, and soon learnt the whole
miserable story. My wife had been in the habit of meeting Captain Decker
clandestinely ever since she had been in Bremerhaven, although she had
denied it when Mrs. Muller had indignantly threatened to write and tell
me if she did not at once cease the intimacy. This she had sworn to do,
but, Muller said, she had, he feared, violated her promise frequently,
though he could not absolutely prove it.

"I went direct to my wife. Instead of a shrinking, trembling woman,
I found a defiant devil--a shameless creature who coolly admitted her
guilt, told me that she had never cared for me, and that she had only
married me to escape from the monotony of her London life with her
mother--if she was her mother, she added with a mocking laugh.

"Thank God, I didn't hurt her! The revelation was a heavy one, but I
braced myself up, and the rage and contempt that filled me were mingled
with some sort of pity. I did not even reproach her. I had in my pockets
about thirty pounds in English gold. I put down twenty on the table.

"'There are twenty pounds,' I said--'take it and go. I will send
you another two hundred pounds as soon as I can communicate with my
father--on one condition.'

"'What is it?' she said sullenly.

"'That you'll never try to see me, or harass me again. If you do, by
God! I'll kill you.'

"I promise you that much," she replied. In half an hour she had left the
house, and I never saw or heard of her again.

"That evening I made special preparations. First of all I wrote to
my poor father, and told him everything, and bade Muller and his wife
goodbye, telling them I was going on board my ship. They, pitying me
deeply, bade me farewell with tears.

"But I had no such intention. I wanted to settle scores with the man
who had wronged me. At a m