You _had_ to kill him, you know! He's first cousin--the
man-eating, or rather woman-eating tiger, to a sort that I understand
abounds in the Zoological Gardens called English society; if the woman
be poor, he devours her at once; if she be rich he marries her, and eats
her slowly up at his ease in his den."
"How with the black wife!" thought Mr. Raymount, who had been little
more than listening.
But Mr. Raymount did not really know anything about that part of his old
friend's history; it was hardly to his discredit. The black wife, as he
called her, was the daughter of an English merchant by a Hindoo wife, a
young creature when he first made her acquaintance, unaware of her own
power, and kept almost in slavery by the relatives of her deceased
father, who had left her all his property. Major Marvel made her
acquaintance and became interested in her through a devilish attempt to
lay the death of her father to her door. I believe the shine of her gold
had actually blinded her relatives into imagining, I can hardly say
_believing_ her guilty. The major had taken her part and been of
the greatest service to her. She was entirely acquitted.
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