AN EXTRAORDINARY DIVORCE CASE.

FLIGHT TO NEW ZEALAND AND

SURREPTITIOUS RETURN.

REMARKABLE PROPOSALS. ! [from OTO OWN corespondent.]

London*, March 12. • A divorce .case, remarkable in more senses than one, came before Mr. Justice Gorell Barnes in the Divorce Division of the High Court on Tuesday. It wa3 the case of Hollingshead .versus Hollingshead, and was a suit of Sirs. Elizabeth Hollingshead, living at Cardiff, for a dissolution of her marriage with the respondent", Sir. . Arthur Hollingshead, a farmer, formerly of St. Mellon s Monmouthshire, and afterward of New Zealand, but now of Birooksido Farm, Osgathorpe, ' near Loughborough, in Leicestershire, on the ground of his desertion and misconduct. The suit was undefended.

Mr. Wilcock appeared for the petitioner, and lie explained that the marridge took place on April 16, 1892, at Ebenezer Chapsl, Cardiff, and there was one child. After the marriage a sister of the petitioner, Mary Ann Thomas, came to stay with them, and she seemed to have been courted by a brother of the respondent. On the 16th of May, 1895, the respondent sent his wife into Cardiff on some pretext, saying that he would meet her there. He, however, failed to do so, and on her return home the petitioner found her husband and her sister bad left together, and subsequently she discovered that they were in New Zealand. Respondent's brother, Mi. Cuthbert Hollingshead, went cut there, and then extraordinary letters were received by the petitioner. One was from the respondent, and was in the handwriting of her sister, in which the respondent said: '*1 want you to get a divorce from me so that I can marry Mary. ... I have two children by Mary." Then there was a. suggestion in another letter that ihe petitioner should go out-to her husband, and then he would give up her sister to Cuthbert# his brother. She declined to go out under any such conditions. In January, 1902. she unexpectedly met her husband in Cardiff, and she subsequently learned that her sister Mary had also returned, and that respondent and she were living tbgether at Brookside Farm, Osgathorpe, near Loughborough, LeicesterThe petitioner gave evidence bearing out her counsel's statement. Mr. 11. H. Howell, clerk to petitioner's solicitor, spoke to serving the respondent with the'divorce .proceedings at the farm in Leicestershire, where he found him living with the sister of the petitioner. A decree nisi, with costs, was granted.