les of
story-telling to which you probably have become accustomed, and to put the
horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr.
and Mrs. Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters,
ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so
that your interest should be maintained almost to the end,--so near the
end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements
which are necessary for the well-being, or perhaps for the evil-being, of
our personages. It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to
ask you to look for your interest,--should you choose to go on with my
chronicle,--simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure,
to others. You are to know it all before the Doctor or the
Bishop,--before Mrs. Wortle or the Hon. Mrs. Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle.
You are to know it all before the Peacockes become aware that it must
necessarily be disclosed to any one. It may be that when I shall have
once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the
tale to you. That there are many such readers of novels I know. I doubt
whether the greater number be not such. I am far from saying that the
kind of interest of which I am speaking,--and of which I intend to deprive
myself,--is not the most natural and the most efficacious. What would the
'Black Dwarf' be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich
man and a baronet?--or 'The Pirate,' if all the truth about Norna of the
Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefore, put the book
down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your
enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph,--in
the next half-dozen words. Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke were not man and wife.

The story how it came to be so need not be very long;--nor will it, as I
think, entail any great degree of odious criminality either upon the man
or upon the woman. At St. Louis Mrs. Peacocke had become acquainted with
two brothers named Lefroy, who had come up from Louisiana, and had
achieved for themselves characters which were by no means desirable. They
were sons of a planter who had been rich in extent of acres and number of
slaves before the war of the Secession. General Lefroy had been in those
days a great man in his State, had held command during the war, and had
been utterly ruined. When the war was over the two boys,--then