best
dressing-case, catch up your jewels, and exchange your husband's roof
for that of your father's. And this is precisely what my lady did do,
and there in her father's house she stayed, despite the entreaties of
her own and her father's friends.

"And why not?" she had argued, with flashing eyes: "I am without a
shilling of my own, owing to the Quixotic ideas of my husband, who,
without thinking of me, has beggared himself to pay his father's debts.
And that, too, just when I need to be comforted most. He does not care
how I suffer; and now that my father has offered me a home, I will lead
my own life, surrounded by the few friends who have loved me for myself
alone."

That the eminent financier--it might be better perhaps to say the LATE
eminent financier--was one of those same unselfish beings who had "loved
her for herself alone," and that he had, at once and without the delay
of an hour, flown to her side followed as a matter of course, as did the
gossip, men and women in and about the clubs and drawing-rooms nodding
meaningly or hinting behind their hands.

"Rather rough on O'Day," the men had agreed. "That comes of marrying
a woman young enough to be your daughter." "She ought to have known
better," was the verdict of the women. "So many other ways of getting
what you want without making a scandal," this from a duchess from
behind her fan to a divorcee. But few words of sympathy for the deserted
husband escaped any of them and, except from his old servants, Felix
allowed himself to receive none.

He had made no move to win her back. To him she was, at the worst, only
the same wilful and spoiled child she had always been, while he was over
twenty years her senior. What he hoped for was that her common sense,
her breeding, and her pride would come to the rescue, and that after her
pique had spent itself, she would become once more the loving wife.

And it is quite possible that this hope might have been realized had
it not been for one of those unfortunate and greatly to be regretted
concurrences which so often precede if they do not precipitate many of
life's catastrophes.

One of Lord Carnavon's grooms was the unfortunate match that caused this
explosion. He had been sent down to Dorsetshire for a horse and, in an
out-of-the-way inn in one corner of the county, had stumbled--early
the next morning--into a cosey little sitting-room. When he came to his
senses--he never recovered the whole of them until h