Lady Lorimer's Maid

Southern Cross, Volume 10, Issue 19, 9 August 1902, Page 13

Lady Lorimer's Maid

By GERTRUDE WARDEN, Author erf “ Five Old Maids,” “ The Sentimental Sex,” “ A Syndicate of Sinners,” &c., &c.

[PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.]

CHAPTER XVII

COPYRIGHT

Lady Clarice’s Sweetheart

The office of confidential maid and travelling companion to Lady Lorimer ■was no sinecure, as Nedda very soon learned, and was well worth the forty pounds a year which it commanded. The guiding star of Lettice Lorimer’s existence was caprice. She chapged her mind as often as she changed her dress, and her plans and her servants were alike subject to perpetual variations. She rented a first-floor flat in the West End of London, with a fashionable address and a repulsive outlook on dirty side-streets and povertystricken slums. Lady Lorimer’s taste was good, if a little exotic, and the furniture she had recently purchased was prettier and more elegant than Nedda had yet seen. But Lady Lorimer had not been a fortnight in her flat, before she tired of it, as she tired of everything, and at the end of a month she had ‘ grown, ’ as she confided to Nedda, ‘ to hate the sight of the place and everything in it !’ The one thing of which she never tired was talking about herself. This she did perpetually ; and as her methods of expression were racy and idiomatic, and her experiences had been amazing, ISTedda was interested and amused, if sometimes a little shocked, by her employer’s confidences.

From these ISTedda gathered that she was the daughter of a country rector with a large family, and that her mother had been first cousin to an earl. This aristocratic strain had not, however, served to modify the fair Lettice’s vagrant, impulses ; at sixteen she had run away from a boarding school, and a few years later she had gone on the stage. Even ingenious and sympathetic Nedda, as she listened to the intermittent outbursts of confidences with which Lady Lorimer favoured her, could not fail to remark that there was more than one hiatus in her picturesque account of her strange career. Young as Lettice Lorimer looked, girlish and sweet as were her face, her voice, and her manner, she was already four and thirty, and in all London there probably did not exist a human creature more blase, more utterly disillusioned, or more cynical, than the widow of that worthy knight and alderman, Sir Thomas Lorimer.

From her own confession, women bored her and she detested men ; she professed herself incapable of either deep love or sincere friendship ; vain to excess, she used every art to heighten her beauty and was as greedy of admiration as a spoilt child ; but love she declared was a thing she could not give and did not desire. “ It is worth just that !” she said with a snap of her pretty fingers. ■“ Look at the women men love the best, and then ask yourself if such a feeling as they inspire is worth having !” At thirty she had married Sir Thomas Lorimer, who was sixty-two years of age and suffered from gout. “ That was the worst action of my life,” she J[ confided t© Hedda : “ the only one I am really ashamed of, Consequently it is the only thing that ever paid me, or for which my friends and relatives respect me. I’ve got my own standard of right and wrong, and it isn’t the same as other people’s. But it’s quite good enough for me. I lived my own life in my own way for fourteen years. I never told lies or did a cruel or unkind thing against anyone. Women hated me because I was so pretty,

and men hated me because I couldn’t fail in love with them and wouldn’t pretend to. And all that time 1 was consistent. But my family wouldn’t hear of me. Then, just when I got sick of the unreality of stage life, and annoyed because in a new play I had a bad part and dresses that didn’t fit me, and had made up my mind to enter a sisterhood, old Sir Thomas Lorimer persuaded me to marry him by offering to take me to Cairo for the honeymoon. So I threw up my artistic career, which was a horrid pity, and now I am a widow with two thousand a year, and I simply can’t make both ends meet on it.’

“And have you never been happy!” Nedda asked, gazing at her with wistful eyes. “Never! you dear, dreamy-eyed creature,” Lady Lorimer returned, “or at least hardly ever —and very long ago, and ouly for a very short time. But I forget all about it now, and perhaps it wasn’t really as nice as it seems at this distant time.”

She was sileut for a few seconds, and a film of tears clouded her brilliant eyes. Never did she vouchsafe any clue to her words: but long afterwards there came to the younger woman’s ears some half-forgotten story of an elopement from school with a handsome penniless soldier, who had turned out very badly and had been killed in a tribal; war.

Dead as were her own hopes and beliefs, Lettice Lorimer took a sufficiently vivid, if evanescent, interest in the love affairs of others. More than once she adroitly tried to glean from Hedda the details of her life; but the girl’s reserve was proof against her efforts, and Lady Lorimer had too much delicacy to press them. In the Incessant employment necessary to her position Nedda had but little time for grieving. Whenever she was not dressing or redressing her employer’s hair, taking to pieces and altering her gowns, reading aloud to her in French or English when she could not sleep, accompanying her on shopping excursions or to the theatre, keeping her accounts,washing and ironing her lace, or doing a thousand and one little services required by that spoilt young lady, she was either playing and singing to her or listening to her balk. As a result, all those terrible experiences at Genoa began to fade from Nbdda’s mind ; she lost the fear of being tracked down by either Denis Devereux or her husband’s revengeful brother, and although she still dyed her hair red-brown, and never appeared outside the flat except in a nurse’s uniform, the poignancy ofher grief abated little by little, and her nerves recovered by degrees their normal state.

Towards the end of May, five weeks sfter Lady Lorimer’s arrival in London, she came to Nedda, who was stitching in the morning room, in a state of angry excitement. ‘ That wretched Susan has left !’ she said. • Bounced off right out of the house because I complained of her smashing three dessert plates last night, Mary. What am I to do ?’ ‘ Is anyone coming to-day F’ Nedda asked tranquilly. This being the third' time the house parlourmaid had been changed within five weeks, she could hardly express surprise. ‘ Two people are coming to tea,’ Lady Lorimer replied. ‘ That’s the worst of il ! And the new cook is such an object, 1 can’t have her seen out of the kitchen, or nobody would ever dine with me again. I wonder, Mary, if you ’ ‘lf I would open the door and

bring in the tea, do yon mean ?’ Nedda asked quietly. * Certainly I will, if it will oblige you.’ ‘ What a perfect darling you are !’ Lattice exclaimed rapturously. What in the world I should do without you, Mary, I don’t know. And the worst of it is I know I shall have to do without you soon.’ ‘ Why ?’ Lady Loritner went over to her and pinched her ear. ‘Do you think I am so blind ?’ she asked archly, ‘as not to know that a certain little lady is only masquerading for a time as a confidential maid, and will very soon fly back to her original sphere P Of course, there’s a man in the case ; and once you make it up with him you will leave me. Meantime, I really hope you won’t meet him in a hurry, for you do suit me so beautifully ! You know, my dear girl, that I never make the least attempt to force your confidence, but that doesn’t prevent me from forming my own opinion.’ ‘ You are wrong —quite wrong indeed !’ Nedda assured her earnestly. ‘ I give you my word, Lady Lorimer, that there is not a man living I ever wish to see again. My life is over.’ ‘ Over, you absurd child, when you are not yet twenty ? Why, it hasn’t begun ! Never mind, I won’t tease you. And talking about love affairs, there’s a most interesting meeting coming off at my little tea party this afternoon. A second cousin of mine, who is an awfully pretty girl, was madly in love with a very nice man who hadn’t any money ; they were secretly engaged, and used to meet at my flat last year and dine with me and spoon. Well, six weeks ago my cousin threw the man over, and married a horrid fat man who sells patent pills. They’ve been honeymooning in Egypt, and are now back in town for the London season. So my cousin, who is dying to meet her old sweetheart again, has asked me to invite him to tea this afternoon without letting him know that she is coming. And to oblige her I have done it—though I think she treated him disgracefully, and if he has any spirit he will tell her so. He’s such a nice man that even I, who don’t care about men, cannot understand how [Clarice can have behaved so badly to him. He simply adored her ; but you won’t wonder at that when you see her, for she is really very pretty.’ ‘ But what is the use of meeting him again now that she is married F’ ‘ She can flirt with him all the same, little Miss Prim, can’t she ? And she never meant to marry him, though she was awfully in love with him, and is so still. Now, why do you purse up your mouth like that ?’ ‘ I don’t know much about the world, of course,’ Nedda said in a low voice, * bat it is all dreadful to me. If I loved a man, I would slave and starve and scrub for him from morning till night : I would do that even if he did not love me back. But if he did—well, if he did, I would walk through tire for him ! And that is the only kind of love I can understand.’

Lady Lorimer stared at her. Then she laughed not unkindly. ‘ You odd little girl !’ she murmured. ‘No wonder with those ideas that you look sad ! Don’t you know that men only care for the women who treat them badly ? But it’s of no use preaching worldly wisdom to you ; it would only spoil you, if it had any effect at all. You will learn a good deal, watching these two people to-day.’ ‘ When do you expect them ?’ Nedda asked.

‘ My cousin will come about halfpast four, and her old sweetheart a little later. We’ll have some cucumber sandwiches and some cakes and bread and butter ; but they will be for me, for those two will certainly be too much excited to eat.’ Nedda went about her work that morning very thoughtfully. Was it really true, she asked herself, that axiom of Lady Lorimer’s, that men only loved the women who treated them badly ? Her education in the ways of the world had pro-

gressed apace since her arrival in London, and already she was beginning to realize that life was a volume of which she had heretofore barely lifted the cover. Conduct such as this of Lady Lorimer’s beautiful cousin appeared to Nedda contemptible—execrable. That a woman should amuse herself with a poor man until the occasion arrived for jilting him for a rich one, and then, after marriage, seek again to ensnare her victim, disgusted the frank young girl. She wished with all her heart that she could warn the ‘ old sweetheart ’ on his arrival against ‘ Clarice’s’ machinations, and open his eyes to the true character of the woman he ‘ adored.’ But her cap and apron stood in her way, and when, at exactly half-past four, a splendidly appointed carriage drove up to the fiats, and the bell rang at Lady Lorimer‘s door, that door was opened by a slight, pale, and extremely pretty maid, with redbrown hair brushed neatly back and surmounted by a white muslin cap with long streamers over her plain, black gown, and the most demure and respectful manner as she informed the visitor that Lady Lorimer was in. Such a visitor ! Prejudiced against her as she was, Nedda could not fail to he struck by Lady Clarice’s beauty. She was extremely tall, taller even than Lady Lorimer, and her beauty was of that long-limbed, slender, small-featured, bright-coloured type, which is the highest expression of good looks in the London-bred ‘ upper-middle class.’ Prom her father, a sporting earl, who had ruined himself on the turf, she had Inherited her grace and audacity, her patrician carriage and her remarkable length of limb ; and from her mother, the daughter of a city merchant, she had derived herblue eyes, her abundant gold hair, her matchless colouring, and that splendid health which had enabled her to come triumphantly through the fatigues and excitements of six London seasons. The air about this person was redolent of a delicate perfume. Her long-trained gown, swathed round her that no curve of her graceful outline might be lost to the public, was of an opalescent silt, veiled in chiffon of the hue of Parma violets, and trimmed with Venetian lace insertion. A toque of Parma violets crowned her bright hair, and a small band of the real flowers was fastened in her waistband, beneath which were suspended in the form of a chatelaine, a watch, a scent bottle, a set of tablets, and a locket in the form of a heart with diamonds. ‘ Lady Clarice Kettering !’ Nedda announced the name of this lovely being and wondered as she did go where she had heard the name of Kettering before. In some vague way she connected it with her experiences in Genoa, but she puzzled her brains in vain to remember aught •concerning it. There was a great deal of kissing and embracing between the cousins,

as Lady Lorimer’s maid closed the door upon them and retired to the morning room to await the next summons of the bell. She was beginning to feel considerably excited about this meeting, in which her sympathies were wholly with the man, and she even watched from the window for his arrival at the chief entrance to the fiats, which was situated immediately below. At a few minutes before five o’clock her watch was rewarded ; a hansom drove up, and from it there sprang a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a mourning band on his hat. From her position Nedda could see little more than this ; but something in the man’s figure reminded her with a strung fluttering at her heart of the husband she had lost. Before the visitor had time to mount the first floor the drawingroom door opened suddenly, and Nedda heard the voices of Lady Lorimer and her cousin in eager, lowvoiced altercation in the hall. ‘ He’ll be furious ! You’ve brought it on yourself, and I’m not going to face him until you’ve made your peace !’ Lady Lorimer was saying*. ‘ Letty, dear Letty, don’t desert me ! I’m so horribly excited and so awfully glad to see him that I know I shall faint. He’s handsomer than ever !’

‘Nonsense! You could only see the top of his hat. Here he is. No, I won’t face him. Go back into the drawing-room and receive him yourself. I’ll come in a minute or two !’

The bell rang. Lady Clarice rustled back into the drawing-room and closed the door ; Lady Lorimer rustled off to her bedroom, and Lady Lorimer’s demure little maid, advancing in some interest and excitement to let in Lady Clarice’s old sweetheart, opened the hall door and found herself face to face with a facsimile of her dead husband, Edmund St. John Wargrave!

CHAPTER XVIII. Mr Wargrave Speaks Out,

The hall in which she stood rocked round Nedda, and a mist blurred her vision. She dared not look up at that moment lest the man before her should read her emotions in her eyes. Of course it could not be her husband. Had she not seen him lying dead at her feet on that terrible night of the eighth of April P And even if she chose to disbelieve the evidence of her eyes on that occasion, and the statements of Denis and of Luigi Borgarello, had she not stood before his tomb upon which his name, age, and the circumstances of his death were inscribed, together with that terrible text — ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay.’ Yet it was Edmund’s face which looked down upon her, Edmund’s figure that loomed large before her eyes, and Edmund’s voice that was speaking to her now, as if to turn her agonised hopes and fears into ridicule.

‘ I t hink Lady Lorimer expects me. Will you take my hat and stick, if you please ?’ Mechanically Hedda took them from his hands and placed them on the stand. Then, with her fingers upon the handle of the drawing-room door, she dared to look straight up into his face as she asked—- ‘ What name shall I say ?’ He was smoothing his moustache with one hand, and staring at her with considerable intentness under contracted eyebrows. There was no sign of recognition in his expression, yet the sight of her appeared to puzzle and interest him. ‘ My name ?’ he said, with a little start, as though she had aroused him from a reverie. ‘ Oh, my name is St. John Wargrave.’ JSTedda threw open the door. Upon a sofa in the far corner of the room Lady Clarice reclined in an attitude of studied grace, resting her cheek upon her hand as she idly turned the pages of a book. One long and slender foot, in a mauve silk stocking and high-heeled patent leather shoe upon which a diamond buckle gleamed, was thrust out upon a footstool, and the light from the windows fell sideways upon her bright gold hair. At the sight Mr Wargrave hesitated, and in Hedda’s heart a storm of anger rose at the beauty’s vanity and hypocrisy. Without noticing what she said, she gave out the name — ‘ Mr Edmund St. John Wargrave !’ It was not until he turned and stared at her before she closed the .door that Nedda realised she had said more than she had been told to say. The ‘Edmund’ was an addition of her own.

Confused, bewildered, dazed and sick with excitement, Nedda staggered rather than walked down the passage in the direction of her own room.

What did it mean P She remembered that her husband had once told her that he bad been ‘half-engaged to a very beautiful girl in London.’ Was Lady Clarice the girl in question P Yet it could not be her husband given back from the grave. Who then could it be ?

Luigi Borgarello's words concerning the elder of the Wargrave brothers flashed back upon ISTedda’s mind : ‘They say he was heartbroken. After the funeral he went to England. Gran Dio, how much alike they were !’ A sudden hope made her heart hammer backwards and forwards, and leap as it seemed to her throat. That man who had crept into her room and taken her diamonds—the man she had shot and killed —what if he should prove to be not Edmund at all, but the brother who was so like him ! But the recollection of her visit to the Campo Santo destroyed this hope almost as soon as it sprang to life, and, trembling and unnerved, Nedda

leaned her elbows upon the table in her room and rested her fevered head upon her hands. /Absorbed in distracting surmises, she did not hear a hasty scratching at the panels of her door, nor the entry of Lady Lorimer, and it was a ghastly tear-stained face she turned in answer to that lady’s call. ‘ Mary, the old sweethearts are together again. Aren’t they a handsome pair ? Bvt she is doing all the talking, I can hear that through the door. I hope he is snubbing her as she deserves. I’m going in now Good gracious, child ! What on earth is the matter ? You look as if you had seen a ghost.’ ‘ It is nothing nothing, indeed !’ exclaimed Hedda, starting from her chair and averting her face. ‘ Shall I bring iu the tea now or wait until you ring P’ ‘l’ilring. But really, Mary, jou look too horribly ill to bring in the tray. Could we tone down cook ’ ‘ Ho, no ! I am quite well enough ; it is only a little nervous headache. Please let me bring it.’ Lady Lorimer glanced at her keenly, and then, nodding acquiescence, she retired to the drawingroom. A moment later the bell rang, and Hedda, nerving herself by a great effort, carried the silver tray containing the tea things into the room, and placed it on a little table before Lady Lorimer’s chair. Lady Clarice had risen, and was standing before the window with her back to the other occupants of the room, furtively dabbing her eyes with a tiny lace-trimmed handkerchief. She, too, had been crying. But on the countenance of Mr Wargrave, as be stood upon the hearthrug with his back to the flowerfilled fireplace there was no trace of emotion, and the voice in which he addressed his hostess was level and wholly lacking in excitement. ‘ 1 was telling Lady Clarice,’ he said, 4 that I had no idea you were in town, or I would have called before. Of course, in my deep mourning I haven’t been anywhere up to now.’ ‘ You lost your brother very suddenly, did you not ?’ Lady Lorimer asked, ‘ I read about it in the papers. You know I never met him, though I have heard of the wonderful likeness between you.’ ‘ There was only half an honr between ns. I was just so much his junior. Ho sugar, thank you, and very little milk.’ ‘ It’s such a long time since you have been to see me that I am forgetting your tastes. See what it is to neglect your friends !’ ‘ How, Lady Lorimer, isn’t that unfair p You left London before Christmas for the Riviera and Italy, and I started not long after you, and have only been in town about six weeks, six very busy weeks, during which I have not been to see anybody. I wonder we did not meet, by the way. At what date did you pass through Genoa on your way back ?’ Hedda’s heart seemed to stand

stili. She had lingered as long as she could near tray, but now she had no longer any pretext for delay, and must leave the room at this most critical point in sation. - One careless word from Lady Loritner at this juncture would teach this man where she had met the pale, russet-haired maid who was his brother’s widow. VVould. she speak it P’ Nedda dared not look at Lattice, dared not throw her an agonised glance of entreaty. But as her fingers sought the handle of the door, Lady Lorimer relieved her fears. ‘ Back from Italy,ldo you mean ?’ she asked, laughing. ‘Do you suppose that anything in the world|would tear me from the gambling tables of my beloved Monte Carlo ? y Hedda breathed again. t But it was terrible to have"to'leave these people talking and to be unable to hear what they said. Hever had she been so strongly tempted to kneel down and listen at the keyhole. One War grave was killed, and this was the other. But —and here a sudden ray of vivid illumination flashed into Hedda’s mind—was this the first time she had confused the one brother with the other ?’ She put up her hands to her head. That way madness lay, she told herSel Bither she vas a widow, and she had killed her husband, or she was a married woman and had killed her husband’s brother; in which latter case her husband was in there, taking tea and flirting with Lady Lorimer and Lady Clarice Kettering, his old sweetheart! Surely, surely, if he were her husband he would have known her, in spite of the alteration in her position and appearance. But bow often had he seen her t Which of the two had she married P Her brain reeled at the questions which beat against it. She sank down in a chair in the hall, with her hands clasped in her lap, staring straight before her with unseeing was striving with all her might to piece together the events that bad occurred in Genoa, and to master the mystery of the twins individual identity. Absorbed in her task, time flew by unnoticed. She had forgotten to light the gas in the hall, and the first thing which recalled her to herself was the opening of the drawing-room door and Lady Lorimer’s voice apologising for the lack of light. ‘ Mary must have forgotten to light the gas. Can you see your way out, Clarice ? Take her down to the carriage, please, Mr Wargrave, since she must go, and then come back and cheer me np until dinner-time. Goodbye. Clarice, dear ! Come again as soon as you can, but I really can’t say when I shall be calling, you know I’m awfully bad at returning visits. Good-bye.’ ‘ Good-bye, Letty darling ! There was a sound of effusive feminine kissing; then Lady Lorimer discreetly retired, and Nedda, sitting motionless in a chair in the hall, hardly visible behind a reed screen that divided the hall into two parts, saw Lady Clarice stretch out both her hands towards her old sweetheart. ‘Ted,’ she murmured, in a strangled voice, ’ ‘ why are you so changed towards me ?’ 9 , , ‘Am I changed, Lady Clarice ? he asked, lightly. ‘Well, you are changed, too. the better—if possible. You are looking charming and happy—as a bride should t Happy!’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘ Happy as Sir Albert Kettering’s wife ! Ted, you are cruel. I didn’t think you could be cruel! ‘ Our qualities develop as we grow older,’ the man rejoined coolly. ‘ I am afraid, Lady Clarice, that you will miss that appointment at a quarter to seven if you delay any longer. ‘Don’t you really care for me a little bit still, Ted ? Have you quite forgotten already ?’ # ‘ I never forget anything ; and I have, as always, a great admiration for you.’

‘ Admiration ! Is that all ?’ ‘ That is the only sentiment I should think of offering to Sir Albert Kettering’s wife.’ ‘ Ted !’ She began to sob into her little lace handkerchief. The man moved restlessly away, and then, coming back, addressed her in kinder tones. ‘How, isn’t all this rather silly ?’ he said. ‘ What do you wish ? What do you expect me to do ? I was deeply attached to you ; you know it. You very wisely jilted me for a very rich man. Of coarse you hurt me, bub I have lived it down. I can own that you were perfectly right. and I can even hope that you will be happy.’ ‘ Happy ! With Sir Alebrt Kettering ! Do you think that is possible ?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘ People’s ideas of happiness differ,’ he said. ‘ A splendid house, carnages, diamonds, surely these things will make you happy ?’ ‘ 1 married for them,’ she cried out passionately, ‘ but I am miserable, and want love—the love I have lost • —your love, Ted ! Do you refuse it to me? Remember how dear we were to each other ’ ‘ So dear,’ he said, interrupting her in tones of icy distinctness, ‘ that I restrain myself now from telling you what I think of you. May I see you to your carriage ?’ With bent head, she crossed the hall in silence by his side. Mr Wargrave had left the door open, and when he re-entered the flat a few moments later and closed the door after him, the little white-faced listener from her dark corner heard him sigh wearily, and saw him pass his hand in a dispirited manner over his brow. Then, straightening his tall figure and assuming his accustomed air of correct tranquillity, he rejoined Lady Lorimer in the drawing-room. Almost immediately the bell rang, and when Hedda answered it Lady Lorimer asked her to light the candles. This was a piece of work Hedda could linger over ; for in addition to eight candles on the mantelpiece and in sconces on the walls, there was a standing lamp, also furnished with a rose-coloured shade, the exact arrangement of which took a considerable time, and enabled Lady Lorimer’s maid to hear a lot of highly interesting conversation. ‘ I think your cousin is looking extremely well,’ Mr Wargrave was saying as Nedda entered the room. ‘ Marriage suits her.’ He was standing as before, in a man’s favourite commanding position, with his back to the fireplace, and his brilliant hazel eyes followed each movement of the slender little whitecapped maid as she flitted about the room.

‘ Personally,’ Lady Lorimer said, ‘ I think Sir Albert is an odious person. As soon as he comes into a room he begins, I am sure, to set a price upon everything inside it.' ‘ Do him justice ; it is probably the right price.’ ‘ Of course, being with him two years, you know his methods. Shall you call at Kettering House ?’ ‘ I think not,’ Mr Wargrave answered with a little laugh. ‘ You see, the last time we met I knocked him down. Our intercourse since that memorable occasion has been solely by letter. ‘ You knocked Sir Albert down !’ exclaimed Lattice, clapping her hands. ‘ How delightful! I wish I had been there to see! Was it about Lady Clarice ?’ ‘ Oh, no ! It was in the streets of Genoa. And it was about a little girl we neither of us knew. Between ourselves,’ he added reflectively, ‘ I am inclined to think she wasn’t worth it.’ £ Did you come to know her F’ ‘ Oh, very well —very well indeed. In fact, Lady Lorimer, I came to marry her !’ The little maid’s fingers shook so much that the match would not strike on the box. Lady Lorimer broke into an expression of incredulous surprise. ‘ Nonsense !’ she exclaimed, ‘ You

are not married. We should have heard of it before. What on earth do you mean p’ ‘ I mean,’ he replied, with the same grave deliberation, ‘ that I married the very girl Sir Albert and I had that discussion about; and on my wedding night she shot my brother through the head, mistaking him for me, and then ran away with her dowry. So I think, all things considered, that I am very well rid of such a wife. Don’t you Lady Lorimer ?’ (To be Continued)