A RECKLESS ROMANCE.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12772, 20 April 1910, Page 1

A RECKLESS ROMANCE.

a- A story is just now current in Lo t. don Society which, from its circui ie stautiality and its monstrous concl re sions, would suffice to take away t) j. breath of people less habitually train< j. in scandal (writes Sir Henry Lucy : the "Sydney Morning Herald"). Son i_. weeks ago there suddenly died i Paris a well-known member of tl c House of Commons, heir to a gres )f peerage. It was said that he, succun n bed to a sudden attack of pneumonii The body was brought homo, and ij c terred near his ancestral home, amoii general expressions of profound r< c gret at the sudden cutting off of a sti c . young life, which had before it promh 0 - of high, distinction. It is now gravel s' whispered in drawing-rooms- and to! .: at dinner tables that this explanatio . is a pure invention. What actuall iji happened, one is assured, is that th q! noble lord, having observed on th fr part of a friend rough treatment 2'; wife recently married, remonstrate* : with him. The result was an angr i scene, followed by a challenge to dea<i -■• ly combat. Accepting it, the tw >j made a tryst in the neighbourhood c » | Paris 2 and at the first round the welJ .;• meaning friend was shot through th i. heart by the erring husband. In or ; ; der to hush up scandal, the story <; f; death by pneumonia was, by comma i consent between the two families con I cerned, concocted, and published. Thi ■ is pretty well as it stands. The clima: is reached by the further assertioi ■ that one of the duellists is a mem be ; of the present Cabinet, who, apparent ly having killed his friend, return« s to his office in Downing; street, quietl; took up the threads of administrativ< i business, and maybe Been any nigh: ■ on the Treasury Bench in the House o ; Commons. TJie # wildest invention of : [ reckless romancer never soared. abov< ; the bold heights of this story. Twic( within the past week I have been askec , by persons otherwise apparently sane I whether I have heard it and whether 1 think thtre is anything in it. ■" .